Darren Argyle spent close to thirty years in senior technology and security roles, most recently as Group Chief Information Security Risk Officer at Standard Chartered Bank, based in Singapore with a global remit. Before that he was Group Chief Information Security Officer at Qantas Airways in Sydney, and Chief Information Security Officer at IHS Markit, now part of S&P Global, in London. Earlier in his career he worked at IBM and Symantec. He has led security across banking, aviation, financial data and technology, in organisations where the cost of getting it wrong is measured in grounded aircraft and frozen market feeds rather than help desk tickets.
Featured in many well recognised media organisations, Darren has written for World Economic Forum, and has been interviewed by Bloomberg, CSO Online and the Economic Times.
The businesses came while he was still employed. He co-founded a cybersecurity software company in 2015, then co-founded the Cyber Leadership Institute in 2018, a career accelerator for cyber leaders that he bootstrapped from nothing to more than 5,000 members across 80 countries. Both were built in evenings and weekends alongside a demanding executive role, which is the detail most people find hardest to believe and the one that ended up mattering most.
He left corporate in 2024, on a date he had chosen years earlier, with income and a business already running. Leaving with something built, rather than leaving and then working out what comes next, is the difference he now works on with other executives.
Today Darren works with senior executives in their forties and fifties who are too senior to walk away and too young to wind down. The work is practical: score where you stand, build one asset you own alongside the role, then build the next one. He is writing The Executive Exit, a book about how to leave a high-paying corporate role without gambling the future you spent thirty years building, and he speaks at conferences and corporate events on cyber leadership, executive transition and building a life that does not depend on a single salary.
He lives on the New South Wales coast near Coffs Harbour, trains most mornings, meditates, and is fairly evangelical about both, having spent a decade proving what happens when you don't.