Hacker Conversations: Ben Harris, from Unintentional Young Hacker to Intentional Adult CEO

Ben Harris, described in SecurityWeek as a hacker with a rebellious streak who nonetheless avoided harm, founded WatchTowr and became its CEO in August 2021, building a platform that provides a real-time attack view of customers’ environments to identify exploitable vulnerabilities. He describes his British schooling as chaotic and notes that his interest in computers grew from tinkering with school networks and learning how computers communicate, rather than from formal academic training.

Harris acknowledges that his early activities could have drawn prosecution under the CMA, which was enacted in 1990 to address computer misuse, but says he was never prosecuted and distinguished between breaking the law without harm and crimes driven by theft or damage. He joined the industry through roles at Portcullis, MWR Infosecurity and F-Secure before launching WatchTowr, and he says he has never sold discovered weaknesses on the dark web, citing concerns about responsible disclosure and criminal use.

According to SecurityWeek, Harris remains driven by a desire to understand how computers work, not by illicit gains, which underpins his career in pentesting and consultancy.