Q&A with Aviva Group, Security Excellence Awards finalist

‘Open communication, shared ownership, and a culture of continuous learning made it possible to deliver at pace without compromising on safety or quality.’

Aviva is a finalist in the Security Innovation of the Year category in Computing’s Security Excellence Awards.

Darren Kent manages a Marketing Data IT platform including complex applications and leads over 100 people as part of a successful, motivated and engaged team at Aviva.

Why do you think awards like the Security Excellence Awards matter?

Events like the Computing Security Excellence Awards matter because they create an opportunity to pause and recognise the incredible work that happens behind the scenes in security. For us, it’s a chance to celebrate the collective effort that goes into keeping our organisation and customers safe every day.

They also help raise the profile of security teams across the industry, shining a light on innovation, resilience, and the continuous improvement needed to adapt to emerging threats. For our team specifically, it’s a moment to take a breath, reflect on what we’ve achieved with the Decision Hub rebuild, and return energised for the challenges ahead.

What would winning this award mean to your company?

Winning this award would mean everything to us. The Decision Hub rebuild was a hugely ambitious programme, and the team dedicated themselves to delivering a modern, secure, resilient platform that Aviva can rely on for years to come.

Being acknowledged at such prestigious awards would validate the late nights, problem‑solving, cross‑team collaboration, and the sheer determination everyone showed throughout the project. For Aviva, it would be a public recognition of our commitment to building secure, future‑ready platforms that underpin customer trust.

What have been the biggest challenges of 2025 so far and how have you overcome them? How have your people helped with that?

One of the biggest challenges has been managing significant platform transformation while maintaining the robust security posture expected across Aviva. Balancing modernisation with stability especially within critical systems like Decision Hub required careful planning, strong governance, and a deep understanding of our threat landscape.

Our people have been the key to overcoming those challenges. The team brought together expertise from engineering, security, architecture, and operations, all working as a single unit. They embraced new ways of working, supported each other through complex technical decisions, and maintained an unwavering focus on security‑by‑design principles.

Open communication, shared ownership, and a culture of continuous learning made it possible to deliver at pace without compromising on safety or quality.

What do you see as the main opportunities for your industry in the coming year?

The coming year presents significant opportunities to strengthen how we protect customers, platforms, and data. The increased adoption of cloud‑native security tooling, behavioural analytics, and automated real‑time decisioning creates space for organisations to be more proactive rather than reactive.

For Aviva, the opportunity lies in continuing to embed security into the heart of every platform we build. By leveraging modern tooling, improving observability, and continuously maturing our Decision Hub architecture, we can make security an enabler of better, faster, safer customer experiences.

We plan to capitalise on these opportunities by investing in skills, deepening collaboration between security and engineering teams, and ensuring our platforms evolve in line with new regulatory and industry expectations.

Which new technology trend are you placing your bets on?

AI, particularly security‑focused AI is the trend we are leaning into most. From intelligent threat detection to automated triage and anomaly spotting, AI has the potential to dramatically improve our ability to respond to attacks and reduce pressure on teams.

We’re already exploring where AI can enhance our decisioning, improve platform resilience, and support security teams in making faster, more accurate assessments. Used responsibly and thoughtfully, AI will become one of the most important defensive tools in our future landscape.