'I went to prison for the £77m TalkTalk hacking. I could be sent back for ordering a McDonalds'

As one of Britain’s most notorious cyber criminals, Daniel Kelley played a leading role in the 2015 TalkTalk data breach. The hack was catastrophic for the telecoms firm, resulting in a financial loss of £77 million (€90.7 million) and the stolen data of over 150,000 customers.

Kelley would go on to spend four years in prison for hacking TalkTalk, his Welsh college, and several other organisations.

But since being released from jail, he wants to use the self-taught IT skills that helped him launch devastating cyberattacks to build a genuine cybersecurity career.

"I want to get into the industry to make a living, and to be able to live my life doing something that I enjoy on a daily basis that's a passion," he told Euronews Next.

"It always has been, and always will be, whether I'm actually in the industry or not".

Now a free man, Kelley has been job hunting, sharing his cybersecurity knowledge with a growing audience of social media followers, and working with companies and organisations to improve their cybersecurity posture.

Many of his LinkedIn posts get hundreds of likes, and consequently, Kelley has been inundated with job offers from organisations keen to leverage his industry knowledge. But due to being subject to a Serious Crime Prevention Order (SCPO), Kelley is now limited in what industry activities and opportunities he can pursue.

SCPOs are court-mandated for a variety of crimes - including drug trafficking, people trafficking, slavery, fraud, and organised crime amongst others - and are usually issued if there are "reasonable grounds to believe that an order would protect the public by preventing, restricting or disrupting involvement by the person in serious crime in England and Wales," according to the Crown