Jack Hopkins

Cofounder, Spherical Defense

Search every verified Jack Hopkins interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In an August 2017 interview with The Banker, Jack Hopkins, cofounder and chief technology officer of Spherical Defence, discussed the company's approach to cybersecurity for financial institutions. He described Spherical Defence's focus on application-level security, using deep learning to model the communication protocols of web applications and detect attacks by identifying deviations from expected behavior. Hopkins contrasted this with traditional methods that define known threats, and he explained the company's concept of "active defense," which involves feeding misleading information to attackers to disrupt their feedback loop and profile them. Hopkins also addressed the impact of the Payment Services Directive 2, stating that open banking mandates would require thousands of banks to expose their APIs to third parties, potentially introducing new vulnerabilities. He noted that Spherical Defence originated in India and cited London's status as a FinTech hub, its proximity to GCHQ, and its pool of AI and deep learning talent as reasons for the company's presence there, while also mentioning potential expansion to New York.