Dr. Anita Finnegan is the Founder and CEO of Nova Leah, a world leader in the provision of cybersecurity risk management solutions for connected medical devices. She is an internationally recognized expert in the field of medical device cybersecurity risk management and is an active member of a number of International Standards Communities. Her PhD research focused on medical device cybersecurity through the use of security assurance cases. In addition to many peered reviewed journals and a number of book chapters, Anita authored, and was the international project leader for two technical reports (IEC/TR 80001-2-8 and IEC/TR 80001-2-9). In 2016, Anita spun-out Nova Leah from the research work she conducted in The Regulated Software Research Centre at Dundalk Institute of Technology. Through her work with Nova Leah, Finnegan has won multiple awards for innovation, security and technological impact. Nova Leah was named Emerging Company of Year at the 2019 Technology Ireland Awards in association with Ibec, KTI Spinout Company of the Year 2019 and was runner-up by DIGITALEUROPE for the European 'Future Unicorn Award' in 2020. Most recently, Dr Finnegan was named as a finalist in the EU Women Innovator Prize. Nova Leah was featured in WIRED Magazine as one of 'Europe's 100 Hottest Startups' and Finnegan was listed in ‘50 Female Entrepreneurs Everyone Should Know’ by Crunchbase. As a global cybersecurity authority, Anita acts as an advisor to a number of key decision/policy maker groups.
