Consultant at Vaern
Meet Morten Eeg Ejrnæs Nielsen
Morten is a partner and consultant at Vaern. He is also one of the leading experts in NIS2 and compliance, and has worked with cybersecurity, information security, and data protection in various public organizations and across multiple sectors.
August 27, 2026
- Vaern consultants
Consultant at Vaern
Morten, why did you choose to work with Vaern?
I wanted more freedom than I had experienced in my previous roles – both in terms of the assignments I take on and how much I work. I also wanted the opportunity to work across different sectors, so I could broaden my understanding of security across society rather than focusing on different parts of the public sector.
When you work with security and compliance, as I do, it is genuinely interesting to work with a wide range of organisations across different industries. It gives me exposure to different ways of approaching and managing compliance, and I can take the ideas and knowledge I gain in one organisation and apply them elsewhere.
Of course, I could have achieved some of that by becoming fully independent. But one of the main reasons I chose Globeteam was the importance I place on having highly skilled colleagues to exchange ideas with. In my previous role, I was often the only person working with security or compliance, so having strong colleagues around me makes a real difference.
Working independently within my field also taught me a great deal about my own capabilities and made me realise that I am actually very good at what I do. I think that really became clear when more and more people started coming to me as a sounding board for their own challenges. I found that I was often able to give them the answers they needed and help them move forward.
At the same time, it is extremely rewarding to see that the knowledge I have built throughout my career can now be used to help many different organisations and create real value for them. Many of the underlying challenges are similar from one organisation to another, which means the experience and knowledge I have gained are highly relevant to the clients I work with.
At Vaern, I have some exceptionally capable colleagues, particularly in areas where I may not have the same depth of expertise myself. That gives us the opportunity to complement each other, bring our skills together and deliver a better solution than I could on my own. There is also the social side. We have a very informal culture, and we genuinely enjoy working together and have a lot of fun along the way.
It also matters to me that Vaern has people who can take care of some of the tasks I personally find less interesting, such as marketing, communications and similar activities.
I come from the public sector, where the structure and hierarchy naturally create an expectation of a 37-hour working week. You can always work more, but it is difficult to work less. I wanted a working environment with greater flexibility – somewhere I can work more during periods when it suits me and scale back at other times. In other words, I wanted more control over when I take time off and when I choose to put in extra hours.
Consultant's Perspective
“You need to be able to communicate with the technical specialists implementing the solutions, with middle management and with senior executives. Part of the consultant’s role is to translate between those groups, helping each of them understand what the others need and how everything can come together in a solution where everyone understands both their role and the contribution they can make.”
Morten Eeg Ejrnæs Nielsen
Partner and Senior Security Advisor, Vaern
What drives you in your work as a consultant?
I am passionate about data protection and information security. To me, security is one of the most important issues there is.
We are digitalising the world at an extraordinary pace, and technological development is accelerating exponentially. The more digitalised we become, the more dependent we are on data. And the more dependent we are on data, the more important it becomes to make sure that data is handled correctly, used only for its intended purposes and properly protected.
Data is becoming more valuable and increasingly embedded in everything we do, which makes security critical.
People have been saying for years that data is the new oil or the new gold, and there is a lot of truth in that. Just look at the number of new fintech companies entering the market. They need your data to provide services that are tailored to you. That also means they need to be able to protect that data – both their own business data and their customers’ data.
We continue to see data breach after data breach and ransomware attack after ransomware attack. They all demonstrate how serious the consequences can be when security is not properly managed or prioritised.
Security is something I genuinely care about. That is my main driver. When I speak to people, they can usually sense that passion and see that this really matters to me. And that makes it easier to communicate and explain why security matters to them as well.
What does it take to be a security consultant at Vaern?
It takes passion and genuine interest. You also need solid experience to represent a company like Vaern.
You cannot simply graduate from university, take a few courses in security and then join Vaern as a consultant. You need real-world experience, and you need the confidence and professional credibility to advise people in demanding situations.
It is also essential that you can communicate with people and understand their perspective. You need to be able to speak with senior management as well as people at every other level of an organisation.
In security, people often talk about what happens bottom-up and what happens top-down. Those two perspectives can sometimes be completely out of sync.
That is why you need to be able to communicate with the technical specialists implementing the solutions, with middle management and with senior executives. Part of the consultant’s role is to translate between those groups, helping each of them understand what the others need and how everything can come together in a solution where everyone understands both their role and the contribution they can make.
Whether your background is in crisis management, threat management, risk assessments, implementing security frameworks across an organisation, Identity and Access Management, or configuring firewall rules is less important. Collectively, we need to cover the full spectrum.
For me, the most important qualities are experience, passion and curiosity, combined with the ability to communicate with and understand people. More specialised skills can be developed over time, and you always have highly skilled colleagues to learn from and exchange ideas with.