In this high-tech world, organizations rely on technology for competitive advantages and productivity. Global cyber threats have been expanding with increased digitalization, and in order to safeguard all companies and their people, cybersecurity must be considered as a strategic business requirement. Today’s modern corporation has a responsibility to secure its data, servers, software, and digital credentials to prevent compromise and business disruption. Cyber-attacks have increased in frequency but also complexity in recent years. It is estimated that ransomware attacks occur every 11 seconds. The FBI found that business-email compromise or phishing scams resulted in losses of $1.8 billion in 2020. Data breaches are running rampant and according to research by RiskBased Security, breaches exposed 18.8 billion records in the first six months of 2021. It is essential that organizations treat cybersecurity seriously and take measures to secure critical business assets.
Meet Shannon Wilkinson, CEO and Co-founder of Tego Cyber Inc., who loves employing technology to find ways to solve issues and enhance security, effectiveness, and new possibilities. The company is delivering an intelligent, state-of-the-art threat intelligence platform that assist companies in detecting threats and allowing security operations teams to have increased speed to decision when incidents occur.
Early Life and Becoming an Entrepreneur
Shannon Wilkinson began her career working for the United Nations as a software developer. While she enjoyed software development, she wanted to do more than simply code, so she began leading development teams and eventually moved up to architecture and design. Her husband, Troy Wilkinson, and she co-founded Axiom Cyber Solutions in 2015 after seeing a need for cybersecurity services and solutions for small and medium enterprises. In mid-2019, they sold to private equity, but she had developed a true love for entrepreneurship, cybersecurity, and using her development expertise to solve challenging issues. In September 2019, Troy and Shannon co-founded Tego Cyber Inc. with the belief that their combined skills and vision could solve gaps in cyber threat intelligence and security operations.
The Team and the Company
Several years ago, Troy was given a copy of “The Collaborative Way,” which he shared with Shannon. She says, “The ideals of collaboration, honest communication, honouring commitments, and acknowledging and appreciating those within the organization are all things that I have carried with me throughout my career.”
The number of staff at Tego Cyber Inc. is rapidly expanding. There are times when Shannon wishes she had more time in the day to spend with her colleagues. She believes in the company’s employees’ talents and capacities to move the product and organisation forward. Shannon asserts, “We have all been working remotely since the formation of the company. We had plans for a corporate get-together in early 2020, but due to the pandemic, that never happened. ” She goes on to say that several of the team members have only ever spoken with each other via video conferences and have never met in person. She dreams of having a corporate retreat where she could gather the entire company on one site for a long weekend. But for the time being, she is concentrating on the commercial launch of the company’s first integration of its threat intelligence platform, which is expected to take place in late 2021.
Enhanced Cyber-threat Intelligence Services and Solutions
Tego Cyber Inc. is a cyber-threat intelligence SaaS (software-as-a-service) firm. The company’s core product is a threat intelligence platform that interacts with leading SIEM (system information event monitoring) platforms to allow security operations teams to swiftly identify and respond to threats within their networks. The company’s solution empowers security teams by providing them with reliable, timely information that is integrated into the tools they already use, allowing them to make faster decisions.
The Tego Threat Intelligence Platform curates threat data, aggregates, analyses, and then provides that data to an organization in a timely, informative, and relevant way via its integrations. The threat data provides additional context, including precise details needed to identify and mitigate attacks, allowing security professionals to spend less time looking for fragmented data. Through its integrated, aggregated real-time threat feed, the company’s platform gives context to threats in the customer’s environment and allows better speed to decision capabilities to security operations teams. Real-time updates, as well as context, are critical in today’s environment because threat vectors are always changing.
Shannon asserts, “Through our integration into the client’s SIEM platform, Tego Cyber Inc. lives where the client’s data lives and we are able to quickly show the client’s security team when we detect a threat in their environment.”
A Great Risk for Achieving Dreams
The greatest risk that Shannon took was stepping out of the comfort of being a corporate employee to becoming an entrepreneur. At the time, she and Troy had three very young children, but they were confident in their ability to execute their vision and succeed. She says, “Looking back today, while there were difficult times, I am very glad to have taken the leap to become an entrepreneur.”
Today, that once dream has changed into a success story. Shannon opines, “We are rapidly growing through our commercial product launch, but at this time, we are able to keep up with our corporate responsibilities.” Tego Cyber Inc. is very involved in supporting women in STEM as well as encouraging young adults to look into careers in STEM. The company has actively been supporting the initiatives of the Nevada affiliate of NCWIT (National Center for Women in Technology) as well as contributing to the cybersecurity community.
Vision for the Next Five Years
Tego Cyber Inc. is posed for exponential growth over the next few years. The organization has a very aggressive timeline for product development that sees the company integrating over 10 different SIEM platforms in just two years. In order to do that, the company is looking to quickly scale its software development teams as well as knowledgeable sales and customer success staff who will carry its values of providing outstanding support to clients.
As a publicly-traded company, Tego Cyber Inc. also envisions uplifting from the OTCQB market to the NYSE in the next year. Shannon would like to take the opportunity to personally thank all her friends and family who participated in her public offering and everyone that has joined the journey to get Tego Cyber Inc. to where it is today. “We appreciate all of you and your continued support of our vision,” says Shannon.
Advice for Emerging Female Leaders
Shannon is a strong advocate for more women pursuing STEM degrees and professions. In her book “Ripping-Off the Hoodie: Encouraging the Next Generation of STEM Girls,” she looked at how we as a society start guiding young girls away from STEM at a young age, as well as the various reasons why women continue to be an overwhelming minority in many STEM areas. According to her, the world has to change a few critical things in order start closing the gender gap. One of the most important aspects is to recognise and accept the world’s ongoing unconscious bias against women in STEM, which begins at a young age. She opines, “If you think about clothing and toys for young children, you’ll discover active gender stereotyping where boys have the clothing designed with NASA logos and STEM themes, whereas girls are encouraged to be princesses, drama queens, and post selfies on social media.”
In sharing advice, Shannon adds, “No one can make you feel inferior without your permission,” quoting Eleanor Roosevelt. She goes on to say that they are words to remember not just in one’s personal life but also in one’s professional life. She asserts, “Believe in yourself. Remember that you worked hard to get to where you are in your career and that you deserve to be where you are. If someone has a problem with you as a female in your profession, that is their problem, not yours.”
