Eleanor Fairford

Eleanor Fairford, intelligence connected civil servant

Eleanor Fairford is Director Cyber Defence & Resilience, Defence Digital, Ministry of Defence United Kingdom. Defence Digital is part of the Cyber & Specialist Operations Command which also oversees two intelligence services, the National Cyber Force and Defence Intelligence.

A 2025 biographical note states:

Eleanor joined MOD in 2024 as Director Cyber Defence and is accountable for driving defensive cyber strategy, capability development and defining policy and Defence-wide defensive cyber requirements and compliance including through the Defence industrial base. Prior to joining MOD, Eleanor worked in a range of roles across the UK government and overseas. A generalist civil servant, she pivoted on her intelligence assessment experience and joined the National Cyber Security Centre when it opened in 2016 and led work on strategic cyber threat assessment. She then moved to apply this experience in practice and led the NCSC’s incident management for four years, dealing with nationally significant incidents hitting the UK from Solar Winds to criminal ransomware. Eleanor has extensive experience working with Boards and Executive leaders to help them understand the cyber threat landscape and respond to cyber incidents.