Tom Alcock’s Post

This was an incredible panel discussion to watch (hosted by Tom Alcock of Code Red Partners). If you want to know how some brilliant CISOs/Heads of Security think, this is your one stop shop. GRC is all about understanding security through a business lens. Knowing exactly how your organization's leaders think is the ultimate cheat code.

this is awesome advice and insight.

The decision to bring on an investment partner was a momentous one for me. PortSwigger’s story is highly unusual: a hobby project that turned into a business; fully bootstrapped for 15 years; a widely adopted product with minimal sales and marketing. We’ve always been led by our commitment to delivering exceptional value for our customers, our desire to be a force for good in the world, and our strong company culture. Getting into bed with investors wasn’t a decision I took lightly. Part of the motivation was personal de-risking: any business can fail, and I don’t want to regret turning down the many offers to sell up and exit. But the main goals were to raise our ambition, stretch ourselves to think bigger, and gain the expertise we need to execute on that vision. We were fortunate to be spoiled for choice: every week, I ignore dozens of emails offering investment. We thought long and hard about the characteristics we wanted in an investment partner: deep capability, alignment on ambition, and shared values. Based on the experience so far, we couldn’t be happier with Brighton Park Capital. I’m fired up for the years ahead, and look forward to leading PortSwigger to deliver more value to our customers and the wider cybersecurity community.

We are excited to announce a strategic investment from Brighton Park Capital (BPC), a leading growth equity firm with a track record of scaling innovative technology companies. This partnership will enable PortSwigger to accelerate our product development, expand our research and community initiatives, and better meet the sophisticated needs of large enterprises and pentest teams. We chose BPC as our partner because of their deep understanding of the cybersecurity sector, proven expertise, and strong alignment with our values and mission. BPC is a minority shareholder, allowing us to retain overall control of our business. This investment will turbo-charge PortSwigger’s mission of enabling the world to secure the web. Today, cybersecurity is a board-level concern. Enterprise security teams tell us they are struggling to keep up with the sheer scale of the challenge. As software development accelerates, there are too many applications, faster release cycles, and too few hours in the week. Web infrastructure is becoming more complex and abstracted, bringing vulnerabilities that aren’t visible in the code but arise only in deployment. We are committed to solving this problem by providing enterprise security teams with the tools they need to stay on top of their attack surface without requiring additional scarce talent. Our investment partners share our deep commitment to the web security ecosystem and the millions of individuals who have used and shaped our products. We have exciting plans to better support our users with more research, tooling, and community events. We’re investing heavily in the next generation of features for web penetration testers. In the near future, we will be investing heavily in our team, aiming to hire top talent across various roles, including product and engineering, customer success, sales, and marketing. We plan to expand beyond our existing base near Manchester, UK, and establish a presence in the US. This growth will position PortSwigger to continue delivering exceptional value to our customers and advance our goal of making the digital world safer for everyone. Check our Careers page to find open roles: https://lnkd.in/eGbWAhwb

Great work for disclosing this incident and finding out ofcourse. This teaches two things: do research on the people you hire and have procedures and systems in place that check and verify code by multiple teams. Let me know what you think. #insiderattack #insidejob https://lnkd.in/ei6QsXqx

CEOs, was your business affected by ClownStrike? The question you need to ask is: Who in your organisation thought that you would be more secure if you ran *more* code in the most privileged level of the system. Any security professional (or any undergraduate student who passed a computer security module) would tell you this is the exact opposite of how you build secure systems and so you have someone making company-wide IT deployment decisions who lacks basic knowledge of security. If this person has ‘security’ in their job title, you have a serious recruitment problem.

What do Palantir Technologies, Expanse, acquired by Palo Alto Networks, and Manifest all have in common? The answer is Marc Frankel. Marc has taken capabilities to scale at TWO defense tech organizations, and joined me on Crossing the Valley to share his playbook for how he's going to do it a third time. Give it a listen, and toss us a like / subscribe / follow so you don't miss more great stories!

This is why you should do proper screening before hiring someone.

It might not be the first thing you think of when deciding to outsource, but strict physical and data security measures are essential to getting the most from your team. 🔒 Fortress, Outsourced’s world-class security model, is multilayered for complete peace of mind. It protects your business information, allowing your team to work from anywhere without interruption. Our ongoing investment in security has driven our long-term success — and is designed to support yours, too. For more info, contact us: https://hubs.li/Q02qGZ7s0 #OutsourcingPhilippines #Outsourced #Offshoring #DataSecurity

Fragility in the #ecosystem that supports your business should be addressed both internally with your #businesscontinuity plan and externally with making sure there isn't only one option...but there are bigger players involved with that one. #businessresiliene #infrastructure