Fiserv’s Colm O’Donaill discusses the ever-more-vital issue of security in a finance landscape being transformed by AI innovation.
Now a senior vice-president and CIO for EMEA at global fintech and payments platform Fiserv, Colm O’Donaill took his first steps into the space aged 11 or 12 when he picked up some new skills on an amber-screen, DOS-based PC his mother brought home in the late 80s.
O’Donaill told SiliconRepublic.com, “It was a business machine, so I couldn’t play games on it, so instead I self-learnt how to code. My first job was typing up theses and university papers for my older sibling’s college classmates.”
Education has been for him, like it is for so many in the STEM space, a vehicle through which you can stay abreast of change in a vastly changing world and, now more than ever, he finds professionals can’t let their skills stagnate.
“Computer engineering is constantly evolving and like other professional disciplines such as medicine and science, a practitioner needs to be continually investing in their own learning,” he said.
“The advancement of AI since GPT-5 was released this time last year has been staggering and continues to accelerate, so if we are to participate, we can’t take any breaks in self-education.
“With new cyber models of AI, we are learning that it is able to expose lack of diligence in security systems, meaning we have to really fulfil our obligation to resolving zero-day issues and continuous remediation of findings instead of lip-service to those ideals.
“Companies that don’t protect in depth will be discovered by automated agents and will be exploited. This requires that we take investment in these areas seriously.”
A tale of two landscapes
O’Donaill noted Ireland’s strong reputation in the fintech industry, due in part to the many natively-grown companies that have shown what Irish fintechs can contribute and the talent pipeline consisting of professionals trained at large multinationals.
However, the challenge, he finds, is in better understanding other markets so companies can scale and grow, while also navigating industry turmoil and complexity.
“It’s no secret that there have been layoffs in Ireland since the beginning of the year in the finance and tech sectors. This may indicate that the Irish advantage is being eroded – likely by high costs of living making Ireland less attractive to foreign investors – and this means there’s less security in the industry.
“This, however, underlines the need to continuously self-educate and avoid complacency. If there are disruptions in the market news international sector, this releases many experts into the domestic market to drive Irish innovation forward – entrepreneurs would be wise to take advantage.”
To that point, he shared an anecdote in which “a previous employer hired technology staff directly from the carpark of a liquidation competitor”.
Primarily, for O’Donaill, one of the biggest mistakes a young person looking to move into a finance career can make today would be to neglect their AI education, noting its similarity to other impactful innovations.
“The current AI offerings are the worst they will ever be – they will only improve. They will become as much a fact of working as computers became in the 80s or virtual meetings became in the 2010s,” he said.
“Any young professional that is not deeply exploiting this innovation will lose out to others. It is a key aspect of improving the quality and volume of output a contributing employee can make – don’t miss out.”
Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.
Discussion about this post