Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Ian Farquhar has over three decades of experience in the IT industry, especially focused on information security. He has held senior roles in Industry as well as in Government and Academia. During these roles, his experience has ranged from working in Enterprise Sales; Professional and Consulting Services; back-line Product support; as well as research and development. This has resulted in a deep understanding of how real security must be integrated into the business, and deliver appropriate outcomes in an environment where resources are limited and stakeholders are many. He can knowledgeably deliver expertise on governance and compliance, then switch to describing the low-level details of exploits and attacks against embedded systems. Ian has had extensive experience working in International environments and distributed teams, especially in the Asia-Pacific and North American region. Ian is highly outcome focused, and has repeatedly shown the capability to take on the difficult assignments which others avoid, and then successfully delivering on those. Note: I am NOT INTERESTED in companies offering contract development services, managed security services, or lists of customers using certain products. If you connect to me just to approach me about these, I will treat you as a spammer.
Reporting into the CPO, responsible for thought leadership and strategic direction on zero trust, general security architecture and cryptographic technologies. In this role, I focus on the needs of Gigamon's diverse hybrid multi-cloud customers, with special focus on government customers.
Evangelizing Gigamon's technology vision and solutions, and providing thought leadership and strategic vision into the market. Director of the Gigamon Worldwide Security Architecture Team, helping Gigamon customers worldwide meet their security requirements and protect their networks and data from risks and threats.
I was asked by Gigamon's leadership to take on the CISO position, in addition to my normal responsibilities as Field CTO (Global), while a formal recruitment process was undertaken to hire someone to fill the position fulltime. In the slightly over four months I held it, working with a very talented team in Gigamon's infosec and IT groups, we implemented a number of critical changes and projects to improve Gigamon's already impressive security posture. Moving into 2023, many of these projects will continue and be improved and added to, under the new CISO's leadership.
Advisory Technology Consultant specializing in Enterprise and Government information security solutions. Regional responsibility for Federal Government and Queensland. Product specialist for RSA Data Loss Prevention Suite (responsible for three of the largest sales worldwide of this product). In addition, contributes to research and development as part of an advanced development team in the RSA Office of the CTO, with patent applications pending as a result of this work.
Delivered paid security consulting services through-out the Asia Pacific region to Cisco customers. Customers included Telstra (Australia), China Construction Bank (China), Malaysia Telekom (Malaysia), Guangdong Construction Bank (China), NAB (Australia), NSW Department of Education and Training (Australia), Shanghai Telecom (China). This role involved extensive travel through the Asia-Pacific region, working with some of the largest Enterprises and Service Providers in the region.
Router architecture specialist, assisting customers in deep architectural issues affecting the Cisco IOS and router hardware platforms.
The SunIT Network Security Group was Sun's internal security expertise resource for it's own IT operations. Worked in both the consulting and SunCERT areas. Wrote and maintained the technical security policy/standards used through-out Sun Microsystems, and sat on the SunIT Standards Council (the main governance body for SunIT). Delivered numerous evaluations of technologies Sun was proposing to deploy, often successfully arguing for changes to the deployment plans. Was the Sun specialist for internal Wi-Fi deployment, cryptographic product assessment, and P2P and IM management within the company.
Managed a team of six System Engineers (Sales Engineers), as well as one contractor. This was the Telco/ISP team during the late dot.com era. Had special responsibility for the management and successful resolution of an issue which saw Sun exposed to a potential $750M lawsuit, due to an engineering defect. This issue ran for almost a year, and resulting in the customer purchasing $10M in extra server hardware (despite HP and IBM's offers of free server hardware to replace Sun's products). Attended Sunrise 2000, as a reward for this achievement.
Worked as a product support specialist, responsible for the introduction and management of numerous SGI products. Initially covered all products (desktop to supercomputer), but as SGI grew, came to focus on desktop products. Despite this, was also representative on the SGI Supercomputer User's group, and was the only SGI engineer outside the US who was on the product security response team.