About

Twenty years. Six industries. One constant.

Shane Minnie is an AI Governance Specialist and Fractional CISO operating at the intersection of two disciplines most organisations try to handle separately – AI strategy and information security. The combination is rare. The timing is not accidental.

Built in the field, not the classroom

Two decades of enterprise technology delivery across retail, education, government, financial services, professional services, and global talent management. Not as a consultant observing from the outside – as the person accountable for infrastructure, compliance, risk frameworks, and security posture inside complex, regulated organisations.

That breadth is deliberate. Understanding how AI risk surfaces differently in a retail environment versus a professional services firm versus a regulated financial institution is not theoretical knowledge. It comes from having sat in the room where those decisions get made, across all of those industries.

What that means for clients

Most AI governance advisors come from one of two directions: pure compliance and GRC, or cybersecurity. Shane operates across both – which is the only way to build governance that is both auditable and defensible.

As an appointed Data Protection Officer with hands-on GDPR and POPIA delivery experience, and as the CISO who led an end-to-end ISO 27001 implementation from scratch – first-time pass, audit complete, certification achieved – Shane brings credentials that are operational, not just advisory. Frameworks that have been tested in front of auditors and regulators, not just written for them.

The EU AI Act, ISO 42001, NIST AI RMF, and POPIA are not frameworks Shane advises on in theory. They are frameworks he has applied, built controls against, and used to defend governance positions in front of boards and regulators.

The gap Guardrail Labs fills

Most organisations adopting AI are doing so without a clear owner for the risk. The CISO sees it as a security problem. Legal sees it as a compliance problem. The business sees it as an innovation opportunity. Nobody is governing the intersection.

Guardrail Labs exists to own that intersection – building governance that is rigorous enough to satisfy a regulator, practical enough for employees to follow, and credible enough for a board to rely on.

We work with organisations from 25 to 10,000 people. Every engagement is scoped to fit – the rigour does not change, the approach does.

In practice

ISO 27001 certified. 8 months. First-time pass.

Africa's leading audio-visual system integrator – operating across South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, supporting over 1,350 remote users – needed ISO 27001 certification to compete for enterprise contracts. We led the end-to-end implementation: controls design, risk register, policy framework, and audit preparation.

The result: certification achieved 2 months ahead of schedule, audit passed on the first attempt, and at least 3 new enterprise clients won directly as a result of being able to demonstrate that information security was taken seriously.

Governance should not be a 'No'. It should be a 'How'.

Shane Minnie, Guardrail Labs

Credentials

ISO 42001
ISO 27001
NIST AI RMF
EU AI Act
POPIA
GDPR
Appointed DPO
Fractional CISO / vCISO

Industries served

Retail
Education
Government
Financial Services
Professional Services
Global Talent & HR
Technology & AV

Next step

Deploy AI without losing control of your data.

A discovery call takes 30 minutes and ends with a clear picture of where your exposure actually sits.

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