The Spot On Feature is a serious of interviews with senior An Irish Executives on Linkedin - see transcript below from a recent interview with Ronan Kavanagh CEO of TitanHQ
IEN : Who are you and where you based ?
RK : I’m Ronan Kavanagh (pictured right receiving Best Anti spam solution of the year award), CEO of TitanHQ based in Galway, Ireland. We provide small and medium sized businesses worldwide with comprehensive protection from email and web threats, including spam, viruses, trojans, phishing, malware and unwanted content.
Our best known solution is SpamTitan anti spam which is an email gateway appliance that protects business e-mail from spam, viruses and malware. We also offer a business content filtering solution called WebTitan, the solution allows businesses to manage internet usage in their organisation including blocking malicious sites thereby protecting from malware and viruses, spyware and phishing.
IEN : When did you join Irish Executives and why ?
RK : I joined the Irish Executives Group in 2011, I decided to become a member in order to gain access to the vast amount of knowledge available on the network from seasoned professionals. Another reason for joining was that it’s another way to help raise the profile of the company among business people here in Ireland.
IEN: What has been the strongest challenge in malware and security industry in the last 4 years ?
RK : without a doubt the rapid growth of social networks at home and in the workplace over the past 4 years has been a challenge. We have seen attacks on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, and on real-time social sites like Twitter escalate at an astonishing rate. The true cost of social networking in the office is of real concern to businesses.
A company network can very easily suffer a malware infection as a result of an employee clicking on a bogus link in a Facebook post or other social networking site. The impact of a successful malware attack can have very serious consequences for a business such as unauthorized network access for example.
IEN: With big chunks of communication moving to FB and Twitter or Yammer even do you think spamming as we know it a problem of the past era ?
RK : Spam is still a problem however we have seen significant changes over the past 2 to 3 years with spam email volumes falling over that period, spam now accounts for about 70% of global email volume, down from approximately 90%. It is widely believed that business network security measures have caused spam and phishing attacks to migrate from email to social networking sites The move to on-line spam and phishing is a natural response to the growth in the user communities of the main social networking sites. Social networking in the workplace presents phishers with an even bigger pond to phish in !
IEN: What is your horizon for the next 12 months and maybe a final word ?
RK:In the next 12 months we are expanding our product portfolio and continuing to concentrate on offering the best possible email and web security products to small and medium sized businesses. We are particularly looking at how SMEs can better improve internet security practises and manage the growing use of social networks in the organisation. We will also be making some exciting announcements around new delivery options for SMEs in the area of web filtering.
On the export front, we plan to continue to grow our partner channel and are actively looking at emerging markets. We have customers in over 100 countries worldwide and are planning on growing this customer base significantly in 2013. As a company we look forward to building on our success and increasing the foot print of our products internationally. We have seen fantastic adoption of our products and it is great to now be in a position to build on this. Email and web filters are critical tools as they provide the first line of defence in any organisation.
See interview at : Spot On Feature- An Irish Executives Interview with Ronan Kavanagh CEO of TitanHQ