John Macpherson

John is the leader of Ashurst's cyber response team working with clients to prepare for, and respond to high impact cyber incidents. As a strategic advisor to Boards and leadership teams in Australia and internationally, he supports them in their recovery from acute crisis.  Alongside the Ashurst risk and legal teams, he has advised on many of the high profile cyber-attacks across Australia and the United Kingdom.  He regularly helps clients build sustainable resilience frameworks and risk-led approaches to cyber and digital security, bridging expertise in crisis management and business continuity, stakeholder management and communication, customer remediation and complaints, data governance and privacy, third party risk management, and regulatory notifications and investigations.  

Throughout a 20 year career in international security and crisis management, John has been retained to assist clients recover from high impact incidents and critical issues affecting operations and reputation, including ransomware attacks and cyber breaches, commercial and joint venture disputes, CEO misconduct and corporate governance failures, environmental disasters, regulatory enforcement and cross-broader corruption, intellectual property theft and corporate espionage. John has extensive experience advising clients on the successful implementation of risk, compliance and business operations in challenging, high risk markets. He has held leadership roles in China and Asia Pacific and brings expertise in managing complex reputation, social, geo-political and regulatory risks throughout Asia. He is a leading expert in managing the risk of unlawful state-actor detention and regulatory interference in opaque nation states.