Interview:
Spencer Mott
From London’s Metropolitan Police to VP and CISO at Electronic Arts, Spencer Mott has had a colorful career with little end in
sight. Here, he talks to Eleanor Dallaway about what the information security industry is up against, how the Sony breach impacted the whole industry, and how EA suffered a breach of its own in 2011
W
alking into the Electronic Art (EA) offi ces feels a little like walking into a gamer’s dream. Star Wars paraphernalia dominates the modern offi ce’s corridors, and young graphic designers walk around in t-shirts and drink coffee like it’s going out of fashion. Spencer Mott, EA’s vice president and CISO, describes the company culture as dynamic, creative, fun and funky. “I don’t know if you can use the word ‘funky’ nowadays. I’m probably too old to use it”, he smiles. No, Spencer Mott, you’re not too old to use that word. “There’s a lot of individual accountability here”, Mott explains. “The people that survive at EA are those that can produce
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results, rather than those that can follow orders”. As Mott has been employed at EA since 2003, it’s safe to assume that he falls into the former category. Mott joined EA to fulfi ll the role of ‘European IT and intellectual property security manager’, looking after a portfolio of intellectual properties and helping EA succeed by putting good protection measures around their business model. He considers the career move as something that he “fell into almost by chance”. This seems to be a common theme among information security professionals I interview. Prior to this ‘chance appointment’, Mott spent 15 “really interesting and fulfi lling” years working for the Metropolitan Police.
His work predominantly involved “CID-type roles, and other specialist operation-type functions”. Frequent work in the high-tech crime unit ensured that Mott developed a good understanding of computer crime and its investigation techniques. A career break from the police led to
Mott’s employment at FACT – the Federation Against Copyright Theft. “There was a lot of synergy in terms of what they were doing in the private area for the American fi lm industry, and encompassing a number of the police skills that I’d got over the years”, he recalls. In the four years that Mott spent working for FACT, he saw the problem of physical piracy give way to that of computer- based crime and online piracy. “That
January/February 2012
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