Sinéad is Data Protection Director at Waystone Compliance Solutions. A qualified solicitor, Sinéad began her career at JP Morgan in Dublin, gaining over 16 years of experience working in a variety of compliance, regulatory and client facing roles, culminating with Sinéad holding the position of Executive Director, Global Fund Services.
After re-focusing her career on the emerging GDPR and Data Protection field, Sinéad joined ISAS, becoming Head of Compliance and Regulatory Affairs. In her role at ISAS, Sinéad advised at a senior level for both the public and private sector, including offering advisory services to C-Suite and board level, with a focus on cyber, information security and data protection issues. Sinead currently acts as Data Protection Officer for a number of organisations in both private and public sectors, in areas such as FinTech and social media sectors.
Waystone Compliance Solutions data protection services are focused on helping clients assess information security threats, identify weaknesses, implement a sustainable and pragmatic programme of information security improvements and embed a security culture within an organisation. ISAS was the one of the first companies in Ireland to receive ISO27701, a data protection management standard that specifies the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and continually improving a data protection management system.
During her career, Sinéad has a particularly strong presence within the public sector, including working with many of the Irish governmental departments, including the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Justice. Notably, her work has been pivotal over the past year in the work it has carried out with Ireland’s HSE, on the acceptance of Ireland’s COVID Tracker app. ISAS’ role focused on data protection and information security with involvement from initial conversations through to managing multiple stakeholder issues, development and completion. The high take-up rate of the app, that is largely recognised globally as the gold standard, is a reflection of industry and public confidence in the work carried out by ISAS.
Since joining Waystone Compliance Solutions, Sinead has been involved in data protection for clients in order to develop their data protection processes and assist them with implementing sustainable policies and procedures. Sinead’s involvement also covers working closely with the FinTech sector where Sinead has worked alongside startups to assist with establishing and developing their systems from inception to launch.
Sinéad is a qualified solicitor and holds a BA (Hons) and a LLB (Hons) from National University of Ireland (UCG). Sinéad also holds Diplomas in Data Protection Law, Commercial Law, Applied Finance Law and Company Direction from the Kings Inn, Law Society of Ireland, University College Dublin and the Institute of Directors respectively. Additionally, Sinéad is a Member of IAPP, the Association of Compliance Officers of Ireland, the Association of Data Protection Officers and the Institute of Directors. Previously, Sinéad held the position of Chair of the Depository Committee of the IFIA (now Irish Funds).
