I am a physical retailer by trade - if your shop is burgled you don't immediately think, 'Is it North Korea? Is it the Mafia?' But with cyber you don't know initially whether you're dealing with a state actor, as they call them, a small-time criminal, an insider.

Dido Harding

Digital safety is no different to physical safety. You can do your upmost to minimise it. You can arm yourself to protect yourself, but in the end there are criminals everywhere and that's the way of the world.

Dido Harding

Yourself Yours Your

Internet safety is quite like the road safety issues when I was growing up as a child. You had clunk click advertising and the green cross man coming into schools to talk to children.

Dido Harding

You Wing Win

But I was an utterly hopeless politician and I worked out that I would be much better suited to making money and running businesses than the compromise that is politics.

Dido Harding

Work Politics Money

You have to have a thick skin if you think what you are doing is right.

Dido Harding

You Think Thin

It's very tempting to go part-time and take up a number of non-executive directorships because everyone is crying out for talented women.

Dido Harding

Women Time Men

My mental analogy for TalkTalk is an ageing Ford Cortina going flat out in the fast lane of the M4 in the pouring rain. We are always hammering along faster than anybody thinks is sensible, with things not quite working, but huge enthusiasm.

Dido Harding

Work Men Age

Often when websites start running slowly, it's because they're under some form of attack.

Dido Harding

Art Websites Website

Unfortunately cybercrime is the crime of our generation.

Dido Harding

Unfortunately Unfortunate UN

TalkTalk's culture is one of a start-up... new services, desire to innovate, move fast.

Dido Harding

Art Vices Vice

I'm still here, living proof that sometimes it's OK to admit to your fallibility.

Dido Harding

Time Your You

I have no hesitation in challenging government of whatever party.

Dido Harding

Men Government Art

If you're a cyber-criminal, the days of stealing data and then selling it for cash in the dark web - they're not so profitable as they used to be.

Dido Harding

You Web Used

I think that Britain's broadband vision needs to be about more people using broadband rather than macho claims about the speed of the technology.

Dido Harding

Technology Vision Using

I have an enormously privileged position. I make a lot of money - a matter of public record - I have a huge amount of help, and I'm more in control of the day and what I do than someone working shifts on the checkout, or running the produce department in a supermarket.

Dido Harding

Work Money Men

Once it becomes mandatory to report that you've had data stolen, blackmailing you is a waste of time. Blackmailing you to keep quiet - you can't, because you've got a legal obligation to tell everyone.

Dido Harding

Time Legal You

I promise you I try very hard to stay out of party politics. I run away from it.

Dido Harding

Politics Art You

I am a physical retailer by trade - if your shop is burgled you don't immediately think, 'Is it North Korea? Is it the Mafia?' But with cyber you don't know initially whether you're dealing with a state actor, as they call them, a small-time criminal, an insider.

Dido Harding

Time Your You

I miss the racing hugely. If you told me I could go off and do it tomorrow afternoon I would. For me that's always been my way of shutting everything off and relaxing.

Dido Harding

You Would Ways

I made a really stupid promise to my husband in my early 20s, when he and I were first going out, that I would retire as a jockey when I was 40.

Dido Harding

Would Were Us

It is not often that one of the world's best entrepreneurs rings you up and says 'I've got this business we are about to float off as an independent company and we'd like you to be chief executive.'

Dido Harding

Business You World

If you have a bonus scheme that is so complicated or so sensitive that you can't tell people what it is, then you shouldn't be doing it.

Dido Harding

I'm a really big believer in chief executives not staying forever.

Dido Harding

After seven extraordinary and fulfilling years, during which we have transformed TalkTalk's customer experience and laid the foundations for long-term growth, I've decided it's time for me to start handing over the reins at TalkTalk and focus more on my activities in public service.

Dido Harding

I've always been of the view that two-term presidency rule is a pretty good one and CEOs shouldn't overstay their welcome.

Dido Harding

I am enormously proud of how we have transformed the TalkTalk customer experience.

Dido Harding

I don't want to give a false impression of confidence where I don't have it.

Dido Harding

Every single company knows that there is more that they can do to keep themselves safe from cyber-crime.

Dido Harding

Our customers will judge us on our actions, not our words.

Dido Harding

I've stood in front of 500 extremely angry people in Waterford when we closed a call centre there. That's not fun, and the day you think it is fun is the day you shouldn't be doing it.

Dido Harding

If being open and honest with my customers is naive then it's fine with me. CEOs who hide behind that all-seeing, all-knowing veneer are playing a game anyway, it's not real. I am quite happy to be seen for who I am.

Dido Harding

It is generally deemed acceptable to shuttle children and adults between London and Somerset every week, but the considered view is that it would be very cruel to do the same with a dog.

Dido Harding

When I was at Oxford, I was a Thatcher child; I was fascinated by politics and I spent three years being obnoxious in the Oxford Union.

Dido Harding

I enjoy being slightly scared.

Dido Harding

Learning what's happening in children's digital life is the best way to ensure that they're safe.

Dido Harding

We don't have very many nights out on our own, and by most people's standards we don't have much of a social life. But for us the compromise works, and I think the best thing I ever did was to have a family.

Dido Harding

Competition drives growth in the end as opposed to monopolies.

Dido Harding

I was that sort of obnoxious girl, I remember being 10 at careers things where people were talking about becoming secretaries and I said I don't want to be a secretary, I want to have a secretary, and people would sort of look at me slightly perplexed.

Dido Harding

When I was 14 my mum told my chemistry teacher she thought it was a waste of time girls going to university because they'd only just get married. I remember being so angry with her.

Dido Harding

I had this extraordinary role-model of rags to riches success in my grandfather and yet I was a girl, and girls in a very military family were not meant to have professional careers. I think that created the spur and edge to drive me on.

Dido Harding

If big, old-fashioned businesses don't attract female talent, then small up-and-coming ones will, and they will end up winning.

Dido Harding

It's not a normal thing to receive a ransom demand in your inbox. I felt physically sick.

Dido Harding

I've had 20 years, 25 years of running business. I've been well trained by a number of amazing organizations and I've got a lot of implicit, subconscious pattern recognition on how to make business decisions.

Dido Harding

I think we'd be cutting off our hand to spite our face if we demonize private health care.

Dido Harding

The number of things that can happen to a child online are just as many as can happen to a child in the playground, only it's more immediate and they have the whole world at their finger tips.

Dido Harding

TalkTalk was not a highly trusted brand before the cyber attack but customers now say that we looked after them in difficult circumstances.

Dido Harding

If I only had one day left in my life and it was riding a race or owning the Gold Cup winner, I'd ride a race.

Dido Harding