The techpartner.news podcast, episode 5: The Missing Link’s Tim Niblett on how customer expectations have changed

The ability to be flexible in the products and services they offer gives local cybersecurity providers an advantage over the big guys.

After five years leading managed security services for IBM Australia, Tim Niblett joined local cybersecurity providers The Missing Link as head of security operations in January 2025.

On the latest episode of the techpartner.news podcast, Niblett said he chose to join The Missing Link because the industry is trending toward stronger partnerships between providers and clients, which can sometimes be stymied by larger operators' product lock-in.

“ I've seen over my years of experience, the larger providers in the marketplace tend to leverage their size and their technology partnerships to constrain their offerings and to constrain what they are able to do for their clients, and to try and direct their clients in particular ways to better fit themselves.”

Niblett started in cybersecurity in the late-1990’s when the focus was on networking and firewalls and said since then, even beyond the technology, a lot has changed about what it means to be a cybersecurity provider.

In the past, clients were happy to assume that what a provider was doing was good enough and didn’t need to hear the details, so long as something was in place.

“ That created what certain people would call the black box mentality where, you don’t know what's going on inside the black box, but as long as there's something going on inside it then you're okay. That's really not acceptable anymore.”

Now, clients may have a dedicated cybersecurity manager or executive who has a strong understanding and clear expectations, and even if they don’t, business leaders and boards are increasingly aware of what is needed and will expect detail.

“They challenge us as managed service providers more to say, ‘Tell me exactly what you're doing, show me exactly what you're doing, and explain to me exactly why I'm paying you this amount for doing those things’. So there's a lot more rigor and focus on what managed service providers are doing.”

Just before Niblett sat down for the interview in April, The Missing Link was acquired by Indian services giant Infosys.

While he didn’t address that directly, he did say that as cybersecurity gets more complex and client expectations increase, there is bound to be consolidation, but that there will always be room for providers who can prove their worth.

“ We have seen service providers or vendors come to the forefront with very good, impressive engineering and technical solutions …  but that, again, it goes back to that same question of why I'm at The Missing Link in particular; I do believe in those specialist skills, in engineering, in diligence in providing services, and I think that our clients expect that from us.”

However, even as cybersecurity complexity grows, there are certain things that remain evergreen.

“ The fundamentals don't change. Regardless of the industry, the country or whatever, cybersecurity is an awful lot about diligence in the fundamentals; knowing your environment, knowing your configurations, having good change management, patching policies, practicing and being prepared for the unknown; those things don't change.”

For more on these topics, as well as what it means to be a cybersecurity services company as the time between new threats emerging and being deployed has dropped from weeks to minutes, listen to Tim Niblett’s full interview on the latest episode of the techpartner.news podcast.