Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Mike Baukes and Alan Sharp-Paul, Co-CEOs of UpGuard (Part 5)

Mike Baukes: Another perspective is, “Are they using ethical solutions? What’s the impact that these people are having on the environment?” Those are different types of trends that we’re getting to become conscious of. They could be hot topics in the future. A really good context in security is how people get used to the aesthetics of applications on their phone. When they walk into an enterprise using dated technology and systems, they often find it an abrasive shock. They’re expecting these smooth and fast processes generated by Facebook or Snapchat, but when they enter the workforce, they’re bogged down with these tools from a different generation, frankly. There’s a lot of opportunity in aesthetic design, security, privacy, and optimization. A lot of these people are immediately wired in expecting faster quality service. Business process management is going to undergo a massive change in the next 5 to 10 years.

I think micro-sourcing in general is going to take off – a particular part of a process that will be best served by five vendors potentially. Those types of systems and procedural processes are incredibly interesting for us.

Finance and Biomed are other interesting sectors. How do you effectively build enough resources to synthesize the genetic imprint of a person? How do you offer better healthcare that is focused on that individual? It’s moving from a position of one-size-fits-all to now moving into this individual tailored perspective. This is happening not only in science and medicine but also in business processes, security, and privacy. Getting all of that together is a great opportunity.

Alan Sharp-Paul: One thing that I would add is there is a bit of gold rush in the Valley in general, and in particular in cyber security. It’s always true that the companies that we see are founded by people with real world experience with a problem that they are trying to solve. The younger entrepreneurs aren’t appreciating that as much.

We ended up in corporate life just because, in Australia 15 years ago, not many people were thinking about starting their own companies. One thing younger entrepreneurs who are looking to getting into the security space should realize is that the battleground is in large corporations. They shouldn’t discount the benefit and education they can get by spending some time with large corporations before they start thinking about what type of area they’d like to focus on. You can’t trade that experience for anything right now.

Sramana Mitra: Great! Thank you both for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Mike Baukes and Alan Sharp-Paul, Co-CEOs of UpGuard
1 2 3 4 5