Reboot number 3.

Posted by Shane on January 30th, 2011 filed in Life, Ramblings

Look I am back again with another post. However this time some things have changed, like I no longer work for the man. I now own half a software development business that makes software for managing Childcare Centres in Australia.

I am giving Information Security the big flick. I did it for 7 to 8 years and over that time the attitude amongst the general community has not changed a great deal. The most significant change I can say is that people are a lot more aware in regards that bad things can happen. However, they wont happen to me still seems to prevail.

Or the cost to implement security seems a little to high today, we’ll get it next time. Information Security is a risk management strategy and unless the organisation you are dealing with even understands risk, your fighting a loosing battle. Even when the customer has had a compelling event, they still will skimp on the security requirements.

So after eight years in the Information Security field I have come to the one conclusion, its not going to improve until governments make it law. Meaning that if you have a security breach due to the fact you haven’t taken the appropriate precautions to prevent the breach, then the owners or directors of the company will face a large fine or jail term. Sounds drastic doesn’t it, well when your personal information is leaked out of a company or they loose your identity and someone steals your house from under your feet, maybe you’ll see its not that drastic a measure at all.

Now I am back to my roots, software development, which I have kept my hand in over the time, especially from an application security aspect.

The company I now own half of as I said writes Childcare Management software. Which in Australia is a fairly competitive field. In that there are about 24 software vendors that write application software for the childcare industry. That software enables the operators of childcare centres to report the appropriate information about the parents and their children that attend their centre to the Government so they can then pay the Childcare Rebate that many Australians are entitled too.

Why would I get into such a competitive business. Well the opportunity to shake things up and take what appears to me to be a stagnant part of the childcare industry and modernise the business practices and software solutions was to great to pass up. Plus our solution really makes us a Software as a Service provider. With a lot of the key pieces of infrastructure, people, practices and processes in place for a SaaS provider, it will not be hard to branch out and provide SaaS services to other industry verticals.

One thing a couple of my close friends will be aware of is that I am always looking for opportunities to start my own business and be the master of my own destiny. That opportunity presented itself last year and within a 24 hour window I decided I would be happy to leave Cisco and start working for myself. Which surprised a few people, as I had said a number of times that Cisco was the company I would retire from.

I left Cisco on the 31-October-2010 and now at the end of January 2011 I have to say it was the best move I have made. I have been buried deep in code, managing and completely changing how we provide our service and starting vendor negotiations for services like payment gateway facilities. We have a third party payment gateway provider that we use and man have they been living it up on easy street. I wont go into to it in this post, however I will be writing a detailed post on the pitfalls that many small business will be falling into when it comes to wanting to process payments from their customers. Let just say it is one aspect of e-commerce that needs demystifying and having the spotlight on it so it can be fair and equalible for all. Currently the pendulum has swung to far in the wrong direction.

There you have it, it’s now time for me to put my money where my mouth is and see that the last 15 years of experience in the IT industry has given me the skills to craft something special.