Jim West

The work the panel recognised

Cyber security has a shortage of people, and the path in can look closed to anyone without a network or a budget. Jim West spends his time prising that path open. TopCyberPro.com exists to coach newcomers towards the certifications that hiring managers ask for, at a price that does not gate out the people who most need the chance.

That is what the Advocate category sets out to find. Someone whose effort lands on other people's careers, measured in the practitioners who now hold a role they could not have reached alone. West has spent more than thirty years in the discipline, and he points that experience outward, at the next person trying to start.

A second recognition

The Cyber Security Awards named West Cyber Personality of the Year in 2021, after he had been shortlisted in earlier editions. The 2026 honour sits alongside that record rather than repeating it. The Advocate category rewards the teaching and mentoring specifically, and that is what this page records.