Today is day two for Compassa. A cybersecurity company built with passion and with values Jes and I are proud of - more on that in the future.
Before we share more of what we will be doing, how we will do it, and why we believe there is a better way, let me share with you my perspective on how we got to where we are.
Sometime in the early 90’s I had my first taste of the Internet and was enthralled with its boundless potential. The potential to create more efficient businesses, better government services, consumer experiences, better more accessible healthcare - the mind boggled. The things I could do then were simple. I could communicate with other people in New Zealand and around the world, learn new things and yes, even play games online. Those felt like a miracle to me with limitless possibilities. I was mesmerised and with hindsight - naive.
Things didn’t stay this simple, the services weaved on top of this magic became more complex and critical to our way of living.
This tapestry is complex, encompassing different types of software and devices to support digital services, manufacturing and critical services. Keeping a continuous flow of ones and zeros across the tapestry is difficult, requiring constant monitoring from outages and malicious activity. The frequency and impact of outages are at an all time high and increasing. Every day we hear of failures affecting peoples lives or business operations, the health of our digital tapestry is closer than ever to the overall health of our society.
The value and importance of our digital services drives malicious people and organisations (threat actors) to disrupt their function. Cybersecurity threat actors are motivated by various factors, including financial gain (cybercriminals), political or ideological causes (hacktivists), espionage and national security (state-sponsored actors), personal grievances or opportunism (insiders and independent hackers).
We are spending more money on cybersecurity than ever, on people, tooling and processes. And yet, it's not enough. More is needed at a time when resourcing is hard to access in a challenging business landscape.
This is where we are today.
What will we do to help you? We will support you in charting a path to navigate the most dangerous digital seas and deploy your resources at the right place and the right time - for maximum impact. We will expand on this in the future, but in the mean time I want to leave you with a story;
During the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale was appalled by the conditions in British military hospitals, where poor sanitation, overcrowding, and lack of hygiene caused more deaths from diseases like cholera and typhus than from battle wounds. Arriving at the army hospital, she collected data on patient deaths, sorting them by cause and tracking mortality rates. Her analysis revealed that unsanitary conditions were the leading cause of death, prompting her to implement hygiene reforms such as improved ventilation, clean water supply, and proper waste disposal.
These changes drastically reduced the hospital’s mortality rate from 42% to 2.2% in just six months.
After the war, Nightingale used her data to advocate for widespread healthcare reform. Her work not only saved countless lives but also laid the foundation for modern nursing, epidemiology, and data-driven decision-making in healthcare.
Our lofty goal is to emulate a small part of Florence Nightingale’s work and help organisations make data-driven decisions in cybersecurity.
Would love to hear any thoughts you may have on the above.
Passionately,
Mike
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