12th October 2026
Every October, Ada Lovelace Day celebrates inspirational women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). Their work often happens behind the scenes, but its impact can be felt in the public services millions of people rely on. By shining a light on female tech role models, the day helps them inspire future generations.
At Civica we’re lucky to have a number of inspirational female tech experts across our teams, from engineering to cyber security and business operations to product.
One of those experts is Civica’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Renata Vincoletto, who leads our global team protecting Civica’s technology, data and vital public services.
As a senior female leader in tech and a role model for women in the sector, Renata epitomises why we mark Ada Lovelace Day.
October is also Cyber Security Awareness Month, so we spoke to Renata about her career, the evolving cyber security landscape, how Civica protects its customers’ products and what her global team does every day.
What do you do day-to-day?
I'm the CISO at Civica, which means I'm responsible for how we protect our technology, our data and the public services that depend on us. In practice that spans a lot of ground – security operations, threat monitoring, how we build security into our products, governance and compliance, and an offensive security team that proactively reinforces our resilience to potential attacks.
I lead an amazing team of around 60 people across the UK, Australia, and India, and no two days look the same. One morning I'm presenting risk posture to the board, the next I'm working through a security architecture decision for a new healthcare system, and somewhere in between I'm dealing with whatever the threat landscape threw at us overnight.
What brought you into tech?
Physics, to start with – that's what I studied at university. I was always drawn to understanding how systems work, what holds them together, and critically what breaks them. I didn't set out specifically for cybersecurity, but when I found information security, it clicked immediately.
It sits at this interesting intersection of technical depth, human behaviour, and real-world consequence. My MSc dissertation was on human behaviour and cyber awareness, which tells you where my head went early on. It was never just about the technology for me – it's about the people and the systems and how those two things interact, often badly.
What excites you about what comes next?
AI – and I mean that genuinely, not as a buzzword. I run AI security governance at Civica, and I see the opportunity and the risk up close every day. What excites me is the question of how we use AI to make security genuinely smarter, not just faster.
The tools available to defenders right now are as transformative as the tools available to attackers – the organisations that get the governance right early are going to have a real edge. It's a hard, unsolved problem, and I find hard unsolved problems interesting. That's probably why I'm still in this field after 25 years.
Why is it important to have Cyber Security Month?
Because the gap between how much people understand about cyber risk and how much it affects their daily lives is still huge. The sectors Civica supports – healthcare, local councils, government – aren't abstract. They're people's health records, housing needs, benefits.
When those systems get compromised, real people are affected. Cyber Security Month is one of the few times a year when that responsibility cuts through to a broader audience. Most security work is invisible by design – if we're doing it right, nobody notices. But awareness still has to be visible, and that matters.