Since announcing in the spring its plan to open a Security Operations Centre (SOC) in Cork, Ireland, to serve its customers in the UK and the EU, the eSentire team has been working feverishly to make that happen. In May, eSentire announced it would need to hire 10 security analysts to staff the new SOC in Cork and since that time, the company has been onboarding and training its new team members.
Earlier this summer, we had a chance to talk to Conor Gilmartin, Gavin Forde and Joseph Foley, three of the new hires who will be working in the Cork SOC. They’re all grads from the Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) who had the opportunity to meet key members of the executive team including Founder and Chief Security Strategist Eldon Sprickerhoff, CTO Mark McArdle and VP of SOC Operations Eric Ritter when they visited the CIT campus early in 2015. The students were impressed by the executives’ passion for the company and its services, and when the opportunity to work for eSentire arose, they were motivated to apply.
Conor, Gavin and Joseph were all in Canada in July and part of August attending six weeks of intensive training and orientation for the new hire group. None had visited Canada prior to this trip for work with eSentire and all talked about how they enjoyed touring around seeing some of what Canada has to offer including Niagara Falls and seeing the Blue Jays play in Toronto. But their passion really came through when they had a chance to talk why they decided to enter this fast-changing field of cybersecurity.
Conor Gilmartin
Conor Gilmartin describes himself as a person with a ‘massive interest’ in security and IT security. And when he was looking for a company with a passion for growth and expansion as well as creating an environment where people can continue to train and learn every day on the job, there was great alignment with the opportunity available with eSentire. Conor saw eSentire’s investment in Cork as a real sign of confidence in Ireland and was motivated by the executive team’s passion about their products. He described this as ‘a key differentiator’ with eSentire compared to its competition. And what about his first experience with eSentire as a place of training and learning? Conor described his experience in the six weeks of training in Canada as a ‘perfect balance’ between theory and hands-on execution in the Canadian SOC.
Gavin Forde
As a soon-to-be CIT grad in the spring of 2015, Gavin was looking for a challenging and rewarding role where every day would be different. The call for applicants for eSentire’s new SOC in Cork seemed to fit the bill. And now that he’s officially an eSentire employee, he can confirm that his days are challenging AND interesting. Gavin also remarked on the quality of the training and program he’s been on with the six weeks of intensive training delivered in Canada. This hasn’t surprised Gavin who identified eSentire’s biggest strength in the market as being its human capital, saying that ‘Having a human component on top of our technologies increases detection and accuracy rates of a security threat or event.’
Joseph Foley
Joseph’s interest piqued the first time he met the leadership team from eSentire: ‘the job sounded very interesting and the people were friendly and people-orientated.’ Despite a very good job market for recent grads in his field, Joseph was attracted by the opportunity with eSentire - being part of the team in the early days in Cork and what that means for future opportunities in an ever-changing and dynamic business. And how has the experience lined up with his expectations? ‘The team from eSentire has taken great care of the group from Ireland. I would never have travelled like this otherwise and the training has been very good, helping to expand our skill base.’ Joseph said he’s found the work to be intense and time-sensitive and stressful from time to time given the threats that clients are facing, but the work environment is constructive. ‘The people are very helpful and we can always ask someone if we have a question,’ Joe added.
Now back in Ireland, the team has moved into their new space in Cork, and celebrated the official opening of eSentire’s SOC on September 17th. And what’s next for the new team members? Well for one thing: helping to spread the word about eSentire as a place of growth and great opportunity.
Conor and a few others from the group that came to Canada for training are ‘paying it forward’ by helping with eSentire recruitment events at CIT. They will have lots to talk about because on the same day as the official opening of the new office in Cork, eSentire announced the creation of a bursary for CIT students. The Yves Beretta bursary will be introduced this fall and will be awarded to a second year CIT student enrolled in the Department of Computing. The Yves Beretta bursary, named in honour of the memory of a much-revered former eSentire colleague, will support the recipient with an annual gift of 1,500 euro each year until the completion of their program.
No doubt news about the new eSentire bursary, the first of its kind for the CIT Department of Computing, and the first-hand experiences of the new team members in joining the eSentire team, will lead to engaging conversations about the opportunity for more recent grads to consider a similar path.
