FIOR Appoints Former UK Government Cyber and National Security Director Gemma Ungoed-Thomas as Adviser on Sovereign AI

LONDON, SCOTLAND, UNITED KINGDOM, September 17, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- FIOR, the AI agent identity and enforcement company, today announced the appointment of Gemma Ungoed-Thomas as an Adviser to the company, with a particular focus on advising FIOR on sovereign AI strategy, market positioning, national security and the public sector implications of emerging technology.

Gemma brings extensive experience at the intersection of national security, technology, cyber resilience and government policy. She is currently a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy & Security.

Prior to her current portfolio of advisory and academic roles, Gemma spent more than two decades in UK Government, most recently serving for more than four years as Director for State Threats, Cyber and Technology in the Cabinet Office. Her responsibilities included helping to shape the UK’s £2 billion National Cyber Strategy and developing the UK’s first Counter State Threats Strategy. She also oversaw the Integrated Security Fund, a portfolio of approximately £160 million supporting cyber, technology and capabilities to counter hostile state activity, and co-chaired the National Cyber Advisory Board.

Earlier in her career, Gemma worked at the National Cyber Security Centre and GCHQ, where she helped develop the UK’s cyber incident response capability and cross-government cyber defence initiatives. She has also served as Private Secretary to the Prime Minister for Home Affairs and National Security and has been involved in the government response to major national security and cyber incidents.

The growth of sovereign AI reflects a wider recognition that control of artificial intelligence cannot be considered solely in terms of where models are trained or where data is stored. As governments and enterprises build increasingly autonomous AI infrastructure, sovereignty also requires the ability to determine which AI agents are trusted, what they are authorised to do, which resources they can access and how their actions can be controlled and audited.

FIOR has developed an AI Agent Enforcement Gateway designed to provide this control layer. The technology gives AI agents cryptographically verifiable identities and applies policy to determine what each agent is permitted to do before an action is executed. FIOR can be deployed within an organisation’s own infrastructure, including sovereign, regulated and air-gapped environments, allowing organisations to retain control of AI identity, policy and enforcement rather than relying upon an external authority.

David Williams, Founder and CEO of FIOR, said:
“Gemma has spent much of her career dealing with precisely the questions that sovereign AI now raises: how states protect critical capabilities, how technology changes national security, and how we maintain control and resilience as those technologies become more powerful.

“Sovereign AI cannot simply mean owning compute capacity or running a model within national borders. If the identity, permissions and control of the autonomous agents using that infrastructure are dependent upon somebody else, an important element of sovereignty is missing.

“We believe FIOR can provide part of that missing control layer. Gemma will help to guide our proposition and ensure that we understand the strategic and operational requirements of governments and major enterprises as this market develops.”

Gemma Ungoed-Thomas said:
“AI is rapidly becoming part of the critical infrastructure of governments and businesses. As systems become more autonomous, the question of who controls them, how authority is granted and how that authority can be constrained or withdrawn becomes increasingly important.

“Sovereign AI therefore needs to encompass security, resilience and control as well as models, data and compute. FIOR is addressing an important part of that challenge by creating infrastructure through which organisations can identify AI agents and enforce what they are permitted to do.

“FIOR’s focus on a deterministic enforcement layer is therefore timely, particularly as organisations look for ways to retain control across increasingly complex AI environments.”

“I am pleased to be advising the company as it develops its Sovereign AI proposition and considers how its technology can support the security, resilience and control requirements of sovereign AI and major enterprise environments.”
FIOR’s appointment of Gemma comes as governments around the world accelerate investment in domestic AI capabilities and enterprises increasingly consider the implications of deploying autonomous AI across sensitive data, applications and critical infrastructure.

For FIOR, this creates a growing requirement for an independent enforcement layer capable of operating across different models, clouds and technology environments while allowing the organisation deploying AI to retain ultimate control.

About FIOR
FIOR is the identity and enforcement layer for AI.
FIOR’s AI Agent Enforcement Gateway enables organisations to identify AI agents, determine what each agent is authorised to do and enforce those permissions before actions are executed.

Designed to operate across organisational and technology boundaries, FIOR provides cryptographic identity, deterministic policy enforcement, rapid revocation and tamper-evident audit capabilities for autonomous AI systems.
FIOR works with enterprises, governments, technology companies and infrastructure providers seeking to deploy AI agents securely and at scale.
www.fior.group
ENDS

Henry Lerwill & Francesca Eaton,
Hawthorn Advisors
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