Peter Warren (journalist)
Peter Warren (born 1960) is an English technology and investigative journalist for various newspapers, most notably The Guardian and Sunday Times. He specialises in technology, undercover investigations and science issues. He is the former technology editor of Scotland on Sunday and the Sunday Express and an associate producer for BBC2.[1]
Career
In 1991, Warren reported on Kuwait and Iraq for the Guardian newspaper during Kuwait's liberation in the first Gulf War and has reported from places as diverse as Taiwan, Romania, Argentina, the Philippines and the Kalahari Desert.
A regular reporter for the Sunday Times Insight team, Warren has also worked for the Sunday Times Magazine, most notably on the magazine cover story investigation into the illegal drug culture in Moss Side in Manchester in March 1993.
In 1996, Warren was runner-up in the UK Press Gazette Business Awards for Technology Scoop of the Year. A guest speaker on Technology Ethics to the European Union’s Information Society Technologies conference in Helsinki, Warren, who lives in Suffolk, is an acknowledged expert on computer security issues[2] and is also recognized within the technology industry for his foresight. Warren was one of the UK’s first journalists to stress the issues raised by computer viruses and the need to address the threat of computer crime in the late 80s, a topic that Warren has been a noted campaigner on since that time.
Warren is now the director of two technology websites, Cyber Security Research Institute and Future Intelligence.[3]
Biography
Peter Warren was born in Harlow, Essex. Warren went on to work for Computer Talk after being educated at Newport Grammar School and Newcastle University. After Computer Talk he went on to write for the Sunday Times, The Guardian, Daily Express, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mirror, Evening Standard, Sunday Business, Sunday Express and other specialist magazines. He has also appeared in documentaries with Channel 4, the BBC and Sky News.
Warren has won many awards in his area. In 2006, Warren won the BT IT Security News story of the year prize for his work exposing the practice of discarding computer had drives containing sensitive business and personal data. Then in 2007, Warren won the IT Security News story of the year prize again for work done with Future Intelligence showing that Chinese hackers had broken into the UK Houses of Parliament. In 2008 Warren won the BT Enigma Award for services to technology security journalism.[4]
A campaigning journalist, Warren also wrote the first articles highlighting the potential for the emerging internet to be abused by paedophiles in 1989 and as a result was asked to brief the first UK police force to respond to the danger, the Greater Manchester Police Obscene Publications Squad, on the issues the technology has produced.
In 2005, with Michael Streeter, Warren wrote the critically acclaimed book, Cyber Alert, which accurately predicted the computer security situation the world is now dealing with.[5]
Since 2009, Warren has worked on the creation of the Cyber Security Research Institute, an organisation pulling together the UK’s top academic and business experts in the field of computer security with leading journalists in a bid to raise awareness of cybercrime.
Warren is currently collaborating on three new books on cybercrime and two innovative TV projects while advising the technology start up group IPBootstrap on its research projects and ethical direction.[6]