29 Facts About Robert Hannigan

Robert Peter Hannigan CMG was born on 1965 and is a cybersecurity specialist who has been Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, since 2021.

Robert Hannigan was a senior British civil servant who previously served as the director of the signals intelligence and cryptography agency the Government Communications Headquarters and established the UK's National Cyber Security Centre.

Robert Hannigan studied classics at Wadham College, Oxford, and continued his education at Heythrop College, University of London.

Robert Hannigan is married with a son and a daughter.

Robert Hannigan served as the Director-General, Political at the Northern Ireland Office from 2005, taking over from Jonathan Phillips.

Robert Hannigan has not spoken of his role in the Northern Ireland peace process but he is the only British civil servant involved to be singled out in Tony Blair's autobiography, where Blair describes him as "a great young official who had taken over as the main Number 10 person [on Northern Ireland]" and cites him as an example of creativity.

Robert Hannigan appears regularly in other accounts, notably by Blair's Chief of Staff Jonathan Powell, attending private crisis meetings with Irish Republican leaders, including Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, at Stormont Castle and Clonard Monastery.

Robert Hannigan is described as chairing the first meeting between the DUP and Sinn Fein and designed the diamond shaped table which brought Adams and Paisley together at a public meeting on 26 March 2007, which is widely regarded as marking the end of the Northern Ireland 'Troubles'.

Robert Hannigan moved to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as the Director-General of Defence and Intelligence with effect from 1 March 2010.

Robert Hannigan was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to national security.

Robert Hannigan was made an Honorary Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, in November 2015.

Robert Hannigan became a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology in 2017 and is one of the few non-US citizens known to have been awarded the US National Intelligence Distinguished Public Service Medal.

Robert Hannigan is a Senior Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute and a Senior Fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

Robert Hannigan developed this thinking in a speech at MIT in March 2016, in which he appeared to take a more conciliatory line with the tech companies.

Robert Hannigan highlighted the importance of strong encryption and argued against 'back doors'.

Robert Hannigan set out the role of James Ellis and other GCHQ mathematicians in the invention of public key cryptography and published for the first time facsimiles of Ellis' original papers on the possibility of digital and analogue secure non-secret encryption.

Robert Hannigan noted an improved relationship between the Silicon Valley companies and government since 2014, but called on the big companies to come together to address extremism and to preserve the freedom of the internet from state control.

Robert Hannigan pointed to a critical cyber skills gap, and has called for a "culture shift" within Boardrooms to meet the cyber threat, with less reliance on the "well-meaning generalist".

Robert Hannigan was involved in monitoring Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, including the Democratic National Committee cyber attacks.

On 23 January 2017, Robert Hannigan announced that he had decided to resign once a successor to his role as director had been found, explaining in a letter to the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, that his resignation was for personal reasons.

Robert Hannigan was widely credited with bringing greater transparency to GCHQ, not least through the use of cryptographic puzzles; his Christmas card puzzle in 2015 inspired some 600,000 attempts worldwide to solve it.

In February 2017, Robert Hannigan was appointed to the UK Government's new Defence Innovation Advisory Panel, along with McLaren Chairman Ron Dennis and astronaut Tim Peake.

Robert Hannigan has written about the shift in technological innovation from government to private sector and West to East, expressing some concern about the tone of the Brexit debate and its impact on the UK academic tech sector.

Robert Hannigan was heavily criticised in the ISC report for later revealing operational information on a TV programme of how intelligence agencies had discovered the identity of Islamic State executioner Mohammed Emwazi, commonly known as Jihadi John.

The successor Director of GCHQ had written to Robert Hannigan to remind him of his ongoing responsibility to safeguard sensitive information and to seek approval in advance of discussing such matters in the media, but without any substantive sanctions which the ISC viewed as giving the wrong message to other former intelligence staff.

Robert Hannigan has served as chairman of BlueVoyant, a US-based cyber security services company, and as an adviser to a number of governments and international companies.

Robert Hannigan has been a paid commentator on security matters in the media and a public speaker.

In May 2021, it was announced that Robert Hannigan was to be the next Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, from summer 2021.

Robert Hannigan published a book on Bletchley Park and GCHQ in 2024, 'Counter-Intelligence: what the secret world can teach us about problem solving and creativity'.