On the lighter side of things , we ask the industry experts what makes them tick . . . .

I was ExtraHop ’ s first employee in Australia , back in 2018 . Having spent the first 15 years of my career working for established vendors in the cybersecurity space , taking the leap into start-up land was daunting but I quickly got busy knocking on doors . With the help of an excellent sales engineer , I scored some big wins with household name organizations in the retail and transport sectors , as well as some of the country ’ s largest public sector agencies . A lot of business leaders had no idea what was going on out on their networks at that time and it was easy to demonstrate the benefits that improved visibility could deliver . By the time I left for my current role at Cequence , we had close to 25 enterprise accounts on board and a local team of 15 .

What first made you think of a career in technology ?

Our story begins at 2am in a Manly pizza shop …! I ’ d been out inspecting a few watering holes with a good mate of mine whose father was the managing director of Sophos . He mentioned they were looking for sales development people so I went and had a chat the next week and that ’ s how my journey in ICT kicked off . I was only 19 at the time and had been working as an admin assistant for a pharmaceutical company so I didn ’ t really know anything much about anti-virus software . It was just luck that I stumbled into the industry but two decades later I ’ m still here and still enjoying it !

What style of management philosophy do you employ with your current position ?

Collaborative is the word that comes to mind . We win and lose as a team – and , preferably , we do more winning than losing ! Small headcounts are standard in start-up world and , as a leader , you need to be comfortable placing a lot of trust in your people , particularly if they ’ re working remotely . Being prepared to do things that fall outside your job description is also vital . I believe being fun to work with and being successful shouldn ’ t be mutually exclusive – both are possible if you ’ re prepared to put in the hard yards when it counts and can motivate your team to do likewise .

What do you think is the current hot technology talking point ?

API security is huge , particularly in the wake of the high-profile hacks Australia has endured in recent months . An API security or visibility product could have alerted security teams to the risk of customer data being stolen from unprotected servers , before , not after , it happened . From our perspective ,

It was just luck that I stumbled into the industry .

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