Tesserent. It is Australia's largest ASX-listed cybersecurity company, with its mission to be "the sovereign cybersecurity provider of choice for the protection of Australia and New Zealand’s digital assets."

As the company explains, it provides full service, enterprise-grade cybersecurity and networking solutions, and currently has over 1200 targeted at midmarket, enterprise, government and critical infrastructure customers across Australia and New Zealand.

The company reminds us its Cyber 360 strategy delivers integrated solutions covering identification, protection and 24/7 monitoring against cybersecurity threats, with comprehensive, tailored solutions to prevent, detect and mitigate potential cyber-attacks.

With over 400 cybersecurity practitioners, Tesserent says it "has the capability to support organisations to defend their digital assets against increasing risks and cyber-attacks," with "deep expertise in security advisory (GRC) and consulting, technical assurance and testing, cloud services, 24x7 managed services and monitoring, incident response and forensics and converged/physical security."

So, when the opportunity arose to talk to Michael McKinnon, the CIO at Tesserent and whom I'm known for a number of years stretching back to his days at Internet security software provider AVG, I was very happy to talk with Michael and to catch up, especially on World Backup Day! 

Our video interview is embedded immediately below, after which is a summary of the topics we spoke about, so please watch and read on!

• I started by introducing and welcoming Michael to the program, and asking him to tell us a bit about Tesserent in 2022.
  
  
• We then moved into the fact it is World Backup Day as we recored the video, and what it means today in a world of cyber war, actual war, ransomware and more.
  
  
• We discussed how cyber criminals are especially devious, going after backups and staying hidden in systems for 10 to 30 days before they launch attacks, which often come with exfiltration of data for further extortion if ransoms aren't paid.
  
  
• Michael explained the how backups need to be tested, what needs to be backed up, how long disaster recovery can take and more on these themes.
  
  
• We looked at the 3-2-1 backup rule and how it should be modernised for today's realities.
  
  
• Michael then shared some of his own history in the world of tech and what got him into the IT space, memories of his first computer, memories of his first virus experience, what he thinks the cybersecurity industry will look like in the future, great advice he has received in life, and his final message to viewers, readers, customers and partners.

So - please make sure you've not only backed up your systems and data, but that you have an appropriate number of multiple, up-to-date copies, that you can restore that data when needed, and that you have professional help as appropriate.

Happy World Backup Day, and I commend the video interview to you as definitely worth your time to watch!

Below is Tesserent's official video on YouTube: