Content Security veterans launch new SaaS-based security compliance vendor

Former Content Security chief executive Louis Abdilla has co-launched a new cybersecurity vendor that hopes to change up some of the traditional approaches towards compliance and infosec.

The new company, Secure Forte slates itself as a specialist in designing and implementing future-proofed cybersecurity solutions that can help businesses address governance, risk and compliance, and information security issues via their SaaS-based Cyber Resilience Platform.

Secure Forte will cover and consult on a number of information security standards, including ISO 27001, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, CPS 234, NSW Cyber Security Policy, and the ASD’s Essential 8.

The organisations will have three key product lines. The Forte Cyber Resilience Assessment is a SaaS-based solution designed to help businesses assess and manage their business behaviour to lower their risk exposure and improve infosec capabilities. Forte Cyber Supply Chain Risk Management aims to help organisations’ compliance goals, and Forte Digital Advisory provides advisory around information security management. 

Secure Forte is looking to work with service provider partners and end-customers, and is currently onboarding in NSW, Victoria and Queensland.

Abdilla has taken on the role of chief revenue officer with Secure Forte, while co-founder and fellow Content Security veteran Mani Amini holds the chief executive role. 

Amini is a security expert with more than 15 years of experience in risk management, security auditing and enterprise security architecture, he worked with Abdilla at Content Security for eight years.

Amini told CRN that providing governance risk and compliance solutions as part of a services business had typically been tough, manual work requiring specialist professional consultants that were hard to find and expensive. 

After looking in the market for simpler solutions to no avail, Amini decided to create one that was automated, cloud-based and capable of producing results faster. 

“What we wanted wasn’t rocket science, with governance, risk and compliance we just wanted to make an automated, intelligent platform. So that’s when we said OK let’s go and start the business and do it ourselves,” Amini said.        

“We know what the customer wants and we also know what service providers want. 

We want to provide a solution that helps the customer, is of high quality and is collaborative as well as help service companies and consultants to do a proper and efficient job and provide value to their customers.” 

Abdilla spent about 19 years at Content Security, joining as a product manager in 2000 before rising through several managerial ranks to become CEO in 2012. He held the role for seven years before departing in January 2019. 

Abdilla told CRN he had enjoyed a year off and thought a lot about the kind of job he’d like to take on next. 

“I was able to recharge my batteries and think a lot. One of the things I thought about when coming back into the industry was that I was more inclined to work for a vendor. I even looked at going to the US to work with a vendor over there,” Abdilla said. 

“But Mani approached me in january with the idea of building out a solution that was SaaS and heavily focused around governance, risk and compliance and helping this whole area that is so complex, but so important. 

“My later years at Content Security was spent building the GRC team with Mani, who was heading that up. The more and more I understood GRC the more I understood how important it is. If you get a GRC practice in place, it really helps to establish a whole cyber security structure that you can rely on.

“Over the past 10 years the need for cyber has grown and grown but the capability and availability has been less and less. So obviously there are solutions for services companies like firewalls and so on, but in the GRC area I don’t believe there was a good tool there. That’s where Mani has brought his many years of experience in to solve the problem.”