Mary Aiken
INTERESTING TO see that concert promoter extraordinaire Peter Aiken and his wife, Mary, are suing their Howth neighbours, Moya Doherty and John McColgan and Suzy and Ronan O’Brien, in a boundary dispute. (Suzy is the daughter of Gaybo and Kathleen Watkins.) The Aikens bought the property from Doherty and McColgan, who moved to an adjacent site.
The sale of Danes Hollow for €8.2m was recorded on the property price register in September 2017 and the property was officially registered in the names of Peter and Mary Aiken in August 2021. The couple also share directorships of some companies in the Aiken Promotions group.
As fans of Goldhawk are aware, (see The Phoenix 26/2/21), Mary also established her own separate businesses in the increasingly lucrative online ‘safety tech’ sector and she has done rather well for herself. When she wound up her 100%-owned Cyberpsy Productions company in 2021, the surplus was an impressive €1.25m.
Cyberpsy was set up for “radio and television activities” in 2014, the year before the TV series that Aiken advised on – CSI:Cyber – debuted on CBS with Patricia Arquette playing a character loosely based on Aiken.
Also incorporated in 2014 was Cyber Matrix Ltd, which was sitting on accumulated profits of €100,000 at the end of 2021.
While Aiken has received plenty of plaudits and oodles of positive media coverage for her work on cybersecurity matters, surely the most interesting accolade was her landing of the freedom of Dublin City last year.
Dublin City Council’s press release at the time highlighted Mary’s myriad credentials, including her work with Interpol, although there was no reference to Aiken’s links to a spooky-looking, Washington DC-headquartered tech investment fund called Paladin Capital, where the advisory board she is on includes the likes of former National Security Agency senior suit Richard C Shaeffer Jr , former US Navy vice admiral Jan Tighe and “global security expert” Richard Clarke (ex-Pentagon).
Last year, Paladin issued the first report on the “emerging billion dollar US ‘safety tech’ market”, which was based on research undertaken by “world renowned cyberpsychologist Mary Aiken”.
It turns out that, from a pretty low base relatively recently, safety tech firms across the Atlantic raised $¼bn in new investment in 2020 alone.
Paladin founder Mike Steed noted: “Our country’s adversaries are waging conflicts and sowing public distrust at the human level through online harassment, misinformation and deception. But the good news is that there’s a growing market for solutions that address these risks.”
Looks like Mary is in just the right field.
