CONTINENT 8 LEADER MICHAEL TOBIN NAMED NO. 1 IN GAMBLINGIQ ‘SECURITY 10'
- Gambling IQ
- Jan 21
- 3 min read
An almost three-decade influence on how the industry defines resilience, compliance & trust
Michael Tobin, founder and CEO of Continent 8 Technologies, has been named No.1 in GamblingIQ’s ‘Security 10’, a roll call of the individuals judged most responsible for keeping global gambling secure, compliant and trustworthy.
The recognition crowns nearly three decades of influence for Tobin, whose private Continent 8 network now spans more than 100 locations worldwide and underpins much of the regulated gambling industry.
GamblingIQ credits Tobin’s long-held insistence that infrastructure and security be treated as core products with reshaping operator expectations around resilience, uptime, and regulatory confidence.
“Security can no longer be an add-on,” Tobin tells GamblingIQ, reflecting on the sustained cyber-attacks that hit operators during the 2022 World Cup, a period widely viewed as a turning point for industry preparedness.
His response has been decisive: the expansion of C8 Secure and the launch of Continent 8’s new Threat Exchange platform, a collaborative cyber-intelligence product designed to spot attacks while they are still forming elsewhere in the network. “Much will disappear into automation,” Tobin adds. “Trust, however, will remain stubbornly human.” The ‘Security 10’ positions security as a strategic enabler rather than a cost centre. Alongside Tobin, the rankings highlights leaders such as James Maida of Gaming Laboratories International (GLI), whose work turns regulatory standards into operational reality, and GeoComply founders Anna Sainsbury and David Briggs, whose geolocation technology made regulated US online gambling viable without compromising legal certainty.
Running in tandem with the ‘Security 10’ is GamblingIQ’s third annual Fraud Prevention rankings, which spotlight the vendors fighting the parallel war. Among them is Kris Galloway, Head of iGaming Product at Sumsub, whose analysis focuses squarely on fraud rather than perimeter security.
“Identity is the bank door,” Galloway says. “The real crime happens inside.” His warning is blunt: fraud has shifted from document spoofing to behavioural networks, payment abuse and account farms.“Machines triage; people adjudicate,” he adds.
Regulation looms large throughout the report. In his new column for GamblingIQ, Russell Mifsud, Head of Gaming Europe at KPMG, warns that trust must now be proven, audited and evidenced, not merely asserted. Box-ticking compliance, he argues, is no longer enough in a world of regulatory scrutiny and post-incident enforcement.
Meanwhile, Alexandre Tomic from Alea, who founded the games aggregator with CPO Charlotte Lecomte, has spotted a troubling gap in game studio API security. He has responded by building Alea’s own API, requiring studios to reverse-integrate.
Partnering with Continent 8 for testing and governance, Alea prioritises transparency and collaboration, creating a secure, end-to-end framework that protects the entire API supply chain. “Security isn’t about telling people what to do,” says Tomic, “it’s about getting it right ourselves first and working with partners so the whole chain is strong.”
It’s another landmark project from GamblingIQ, and the message is unmistakable: security and fraud prevention are no longer just defensive functions - they are critical drivers of growth, licence compliance, and brand trust.
>> Read 'Defenders of Trust': https://www.gamblingiq.co.uk/magazine-defenders-of-trust-fraud-prevention-and-security-report-2026
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