To sustain the ThreatDefence’s growth and culture, founder and CEO Zlatko Hristov chooses teams carefully, ensuring staff are properly rewarded, given the freedom to innovate, and always put family first.
From childhood, Hristov had a fascination with technology.
At the age of five, he was helping his uncle in an electrical repair workshop, unaware this early experience would shape his future career ambitions. He had many roles as a non-English speaking migrant, working as a dishwasher, builder and cleaner to make ends meet. At night, he spent time in a home computer lab as a hobby and for fun.
“After two years of manual labour, I landed my first role as a computer technician in Bondi Junction where we invented Linux firewalls for local businesses,” Hristov said.
A year later, he secured a position as a network engineer for an international financial trading company, Brokerone. It was then acquired by a global corporation in MF Global and in the next five years, Hristov was promoted through the ranks to IT manager, CTO, Asia-Pacific CISO and then global CISO.
In 2010, Hristov created a system to monitor his family’s cyber safety following an incident. What began as a hobby turned into an obsession, often leading to 48-hour coding and testing sessions.
With the rise of the hacking group Anonymous in 2011, and as a global CISO, Hristov knew its capabilities were inadequate.
“I proposed to our global CIO that we use the system I had developed at home to monitor for cyber risks as a tactical solution,” he said.
“At our next global management meeting in Hong Kong, I presented a live hacking demo, compromising valuable assets and how my homegrown solution successfully detected threats. We were given permission to deploy it.”
In 2014, one of the big banks needed help building a custom SIEM system. The project was so complex that the bank had spent several years with global consulting firms and Hristov’s team completed it in a few weeks based on his own homemade SIEM system.
“These two validations created the confidence to launch ThreatDefence. However, our primary motivation has always been to enhance community well-being rather than being commercially motivated alone,” he said. “As the company grows, so does the ability to make a positive impact.”
Growth mode
Before starting the business, Hristov was confident it would achieve global success. However, six months in, reality played a different hand.
Around 2015, the demand for cyber security was relatively low and there were clear, reputable global leaders, Hristov said.
“Organisations were not heavily focused on security, making it challenging to establish a cyber security business,” he said.
Instead he pivoted towards starting a network security and architecture-focused managed service provider (MSP), Egarda.
“I used my decade-old reputation as a network engineer in the industry and it was effortless to onboard customers,” he said.
The main services provided were centered on security, network, Linux system engineering to facilitate ultra-low latency connections to financial exchanges such as ASX, NYSE, and crypto currencies.
“I used the profit from the MSP to fund the development of ThreatDefence’s platform and to build our core team, which remains with us today,” Hristov said.
“The turning point came when we secured our first nationally recognised customer. From that moment, I was certain of our success.”
To sustain the company’s growth, Hristov said he chooses his team carefully, ensuring they are properly rewarded with equity, given the freedom to innovate, and always put family first.
“This culture has been instrumental in driving our success,” he said.
A top priority for Hristov is expanding globally with greater scalability.
“We already have a presence on every continent, and we plan to continue releasing new tools and features, which is where we invest most of our time,” he said.
“This year, we will establish our business development team with senior members. Until now, our growth has been mostly organic, without a formal sales team.”
A key focus is launching its hyper-realistic cyber range product, already used by educational institutions, to help address the national shortage of skilled professionals. Hristov said AI has become integral to its daily operations, adding new productivity features regularly, with a dedicated team working full-time on AI projects.
“I am particularly excited about completing our autonomous Security Operations Center (SOC), designed for almost human-free operation,” he said.
“This initiative is not about reducing labour costs but about reallocating resources towards threat hunting and supporting organisations that cannot afford human security analysts.”
Another project is its SecOps ChatBot, which allows users to interact with their security data conversationally, asking questions about their security posture or creating reports in 30 seconds instead of three days.
“Google has announced a similar project, and we aim to release ours ahead of them,” Hristov said.
More room to play
Currently in its seventh year of business, Hristov’s confidence is unwavering in stating that the competitive cyber security landscape has never been a problem.
“Our SecOps platform offers unique features and tools that other platforms lack, which our customers greatly appreciate. We have effectively identified gaps in visibility, R&D, SecOps, AI and usability where many global competitors are trying to catch up,” he said.
For instance, many prestigious global vendors do not have a tool to monitor industrial networks, such as those in water treatment or power plants, Hristov said.
“We received an award from the Assistant Federal Minister for Industries for that exact tool in 2017. Our SecOps platform deploys with over 100 built-in detection and helper tools to run effective security operations in one day,” he said. “To achieve the same in an organisation with 1000 employees, it would take 12 months and involve 10+ vendors and 10 times the effort.”
Hristov said it particularly stands out in the market in providing a fit-for-purpose, plug-and-play platform that offers visibility and complete SecOps capabilities. It includes all the tools, scanners and dashboards for an “immediate” view of the security posture across the entire business, Hristov said, explaining organisations typically spend years assembling these capabilities.
“The care we extend to our clients and the passion of our team goes beyond technology,” he said.
Lessons learnt
The first three years of starting a business are like trying to climb the outside of a 30-story building. Every weakness and strength are exposed and tested daily.
“Some nights, I had to run for 30 minutes before bed just to sleep well. That mental hardship in the first few years of starting a business also comes with priceless rewards: you become resilient, almost pain-free and able to face any challenge for the rest of your life,” Hristov said. “The key lessons I’ve learned are to always be yourself, honest and devote 100 per cent care to your customers.”
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