admin Within the last decade, the threat landscape has rapidly evolved and organisations are finding themselves increasingly under attack from sophisticated threats such as phishing, ransomware, CEO fraud and supply chain compromise.
At the same time, the requirement to demonstrate regulatory compliance has increased due to the implementation of the GDPR and other global privacy legislation. The consequences of non-compliance with these laws can include financial sanctions, reputational damage and an increased risk of cyber attacks.
Robert O’Brien, CEO and founder of MetaCompliance, believes that if organisations want to provide a robust defence against cyber attacks, they need to implement a comprehensive Cyber Security awareness campaign that educates staff and mitigates risk.
With more than 30 years’ experience in the IT industry, Robert is a serial technology entrepreneur with a wealth of experience in executing and developing strategies for high growth businesses. He is committed to leading MetaCompliance through its current scaling phase and ensuring that the company remains at the forefront of innovation.
‘MetaCompliance’, The Complete Cyber Security and Privacy Management System
Founded in 2005, MetaCompliance is a Cyber Security and Compliance specialist that helps organisations keep their staff safe online, secure their digital assets and protect their reputation and brand. To do this, the company has developed a cloud platform that combines all the key pieces of software functionality needed for companies to stay cyber secure and regulatory compliant. It provides customers with a fully integrated and multilingual suite of compliance capabilities that includes policy management, eLearning, simulated phishing, privacy, risk and campaign management.
The campaign functionality enables organisations to create an annual staff awareness campaign that automates the delivery of policies, training, blogs, surveys and simulated phishing exercises. The campaign can be set up within a matter of hours and will automatically schedule content throughout the course of a year. This allows security leadership to spend less time creating and coordinating staff awareness campaigns and more time addressing and mitigating risks.
The MetaCompliance solution differs from traditional training solutions through its unique ability to offer Cyber Security and Privacy solutions from a unified platform. The platform’s ease of use, engaging user experience, and regularly updated content ensures the effective delivery of key policies and training. Staff are trained to defend against evolving cyber threats and organisations have all the necessary information needed to meet stringent regulatory requirements.
The Road to Success
Challenges are inevitable in the establishment of a successful business and Robert believes the experience he had in setting up three start-ups prior to Metacompliance was essential in the success of the company. “A failure I had during the Dot Com period provided me with great insight into what was vanity and what was real when building a tech organisation.”
A Passion for Growth and Development
[mks_col][mks_one_half]Robert enjoys developing ideas, people and organisations. He feels very fortuitous that he has been able to do all three things throughout his entrepreneurial career. Developing ideas is a personal favourite for the tech founder whose passion for innovation has helped position MetaCompliance as one of the most significant cyber organisations in the world.
[/mks_one_half][mks_one_half]My long-term strategy is to take revenue to $100 Million and become the world’s leading information security awareness and compliance software vendor[/mks_one_half][/mks_col]
Company Values
According to Robert, the most important thing for a company is to provide value for customers in avoiding information security incidents and providing assistance in defending against regulatory sanctions.The second most important thing is to provide opportunities for people to grow in both their professional area and within the security and compliance domain. Thirdly, is the ability to scale their business in a consistent and predictable manner in order to provide customers with a product vision and employees with career progression.
Employees are at The Heart of Business
Robert believes his employees have played an important role in the growth of the company: “Our employees are at the heart of our business. We believe that our staff should be allowed the opportunity to grow fast within our organisation and share their ideas for the development of the business.”
The Ideal Client
For Robert, the ideal client would be the person who is responsible for both information security and compliance within an organisation. This client would have a small team of people who look after many different areas within the business from the security compliance standpoint.
Improving the Customer Experience
‘Feedback is crucial in the development and success of our products.’- notes Robert while describing how the company deals with criticism and feedback. MetaCompliance actively encourages customers to let them know how they can improve their offering. As soon as they receive this feedback, their specialist in-house design and software development teams implement the suggested changes to help improve the customer experience and ultimately improve the product going forward.
A Bright Future
About future goals, Robert said, “My short-term goal is to double the size of the company in terms of revenue and start staff. My long-term strategy is to take revenue to $100 Million and become the world’s leading information security awareness and compliance software vendor.”
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