Founded in Canberra in 2020, Irradiate Security has been steadily growing their local presence over the past few years and loves working with other ACT-based organisation.
The Canberra Cyber Hub caught up with Tim Grogan of Irradiate Security to learn more about their startup story and why they got into cyber.
Introducing Irradiate Security:
Irradiate Security is a specialist enterprise that provides cyber threat emulation to identify gaps in an organisation's security posture. This is achieved through vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, social engineering, and for mature organisations that want to really test their defences, Red teaming.
Our team have worked across the government, education, and financial sectors to deliver quality outcomes that have helped organisations to improve their cyber security hygiene. We have also provided education and training workshops to teach internal teams how cyber adversaries operate and how to best protect their infrastructure if targeted by an attack.
How did you get into cyber security?
Understanding how things work, and then pulling them apart, has always been of great interest to me. This evolved over time from modifying the original PlayStation, to bypassing parental locks on school IT infrastructure. Eventually, my career in IT turned into how to prevent others from doing the things I had done.
Tell us about Irradiate Security's unique service offering:
Irradiate Security aim to provide a realistic cyber threat experience for organisations looking to test their defences. We achieve this by offering offensive exercises that suit our client's specific level of cyber security maturity:
- Vulnerability Assessments
- Penetration Testing
- Social Engineering Awareness Campaigns
- Red Teaming
These activities are conducted by an expert team of cyber security professionals with years of industry and academic experience.
What do you see as your customer's biggest pain point, and how do your unique products and services assist them in addressing these issues?
One of the issues we have encountered constantly is that the offensive services are only valuable when they are being conducted. The annual cycle of penetration tests, or the point-in-time assessment, does not provide lasting coverage. To solve this, we have instead adopted an ongoing model of continuous validation for our clients. This approach identifies potential vulnerabilities as they occur, and we can provide a comprehensive snapshot of an organisation's security posture on demand.
What advice do you have for those wanting to pursue a career cyber?
If you're looking to get into security services, it helps to understand the technology you're trying to protect. It's impossible to be an expert at everything, so focus on a key skill set for a specific technology and then expand from there.
What career opportunities are available with Irradiate Security?
Irradiate Security is always on the lookout for technologists that enjoy breaking things. Offensive services is a wide and varied field of cyber security and future professionals can come from any industry or background. If you also like pulling things apart to find out how they work and can put them back together in novel ways, then please reach out. As we look forward to helping Australian businesses improve their cyber security, many hands will make light work.
What advice do you have for everyday Australians about cybersecurity?
Being secure online is really really hard. The biggest companies in the world get it wrong on a daily basis. The best thing to do as an individual is to be aware of what information you are putting online. With a fair idea of what subscriptions you have, who has access to what account, and what payments are regularly occurring, potential abuses can be detected. This behavioural monitoring is an effective way to limit the potential impacts if your identity becomes compromised, or you are targeted by a scam.
