Fast50 firm grows from Adelaide to the world

As a small IT firm in Adelaide, it can’t be easy to get recognised. So for SecureWare to not only win a deal with one of Australia’s most loved brands, but to also help the client score an invite to a global vendor conference in Las Vegas, it must be doing something right. What’s even more impressive is that the project was outside SecureWare’s info­sec sweet spot.

SecureWare, which came sixth in last year’s CRN Fast50, worked with the Royal Flying Doctor Service to create a type of arrival and departure board for flights across regional Australia. Based on technology from Splunk, the solution has also been rolled out across the Flying Doctors’ recent Buy The Sky charity campaign, where donors can buy a patch of sky along a Royal Flying Doctor Service flight path. Whenever a plane crosses a donor’s patch, Splunk sends a message to their phone.

After the Royal Flying Doctor Service’s IT manager Adam Ind spoke at a customer event organised by SecureWare with vendors Splunk and Palo Alto Networks, Splunk was so impressed with the solution that they offered the CIO a prime slot at their upcoming worldwide conference.

"One of my biggest customers is now going to Vegas to present at the keynote for Splunk," says SecureWare technical director Adam Barker. "I couldn’t believe it: from presenting to 50 people, to flying to Vegas and presenting to the whole Splunk conference."

SecureWare is also getting its name out there as a sponsor of GovHack Unleashed - South Australia; other silver sponsors included Adelaide City Council, Flinders University and the Australian Computer Society.

Punching above its weight has become a modus operandi at the three-staff Adelaide IT company. In July 2013, it closed a $1.65 million Palo Alto sale to the defence industry that was the US vendor’s biggest single order in Australia. The next-gen firewall vendor continues to be a core part of Secure­Ware’s business. "Palo Alto Networks is booming," says Barker. "It has been selling faster and customer interest has been stronger than ever before."

A new growth area for SecureWare is in the utilities space, after Palo Alto launched functionality for the kinds of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) networks used by water and power companies.

SecureWare is now on the hunt for a network security engineer. He admits finding the right candidate is proving a challenge. "Finding a Splunk resource nationally is difficult, let alone finding one in South Australia. It is a good problem to have. I would prefer not to look interstate or overseas but that is definitely on the table."