Vertali in APAC: cyber security, the resourcing challenge, and making a difference

Mark Wilson and Linda McGrath recently visited Vertali APAC, meeting with potential partners and talking to companies in sectors including banking and finance, automotive and insurance, discussing the challenges they face – and opportunities for change.

By Mark Wilson, Technical Director
We received an extremely warm welcome from all the companies we met, and other industry players including IBM, BMC and Software AG. We also climbed Sydney Harbor Bridge, but that’s a story for another time. While we covered lots of ground in our conversations, often getting down to a granular level of technical detail, two major areas of concern (and opportunity) emerged.

The first is security, which I’ll return to in a moment. The second was the resourcing challenge facing organizations in the region. Of course, the continuing skills shortage is a global issue, with organizations crying out for talent. My Vertali colleague Linda McGrath wrote about this last year in Planet Mainframe.

We visited one large bank that’s quite advanced in terms of its future resourcing. It had younger people on its mainframe team, which is encouraging. But more needs to be done. There simply aren’t enough experienced people around, whether it’s for BAU or projects.

It was clear we could help in a number of ways. For example, delivering specific skills and support via our out-tasking service – experts from our Shared Services Centre. We also talked about partnering with clients in the region on training and mentoring, aligned with, or even part of, our own New To Z (NTZ) initiative. NTZ identifies talent, provides three months of prep and up to nine months of mentoring and on-the-job experience. After 12 months, NTZs are placed with clients in roles where they can start delivering what their employers need – and start building their careers.

As in the UK and elsewhere, there are also opportunities to work with academic institutions, to help provide the experts of tomorrow. And interestingly, there’s no real presence or equivalent in the region of SHARE®, the independent IT association that provides education, networking and industry advocacy, or Guide Share Europe (GSE), the non-profit IT knowledge network that I’ve been involved with for years. Part of GSE’s brief is to help create the next generation. I was left wondering: could we extend the GSE network here? After all, Australia is already part of the Eurovision Song Contest family, and there is pent-up demand. Other companies are investing in the region. 21st Century Software (21CS) has a Center of Excellence in Australia, with around 80 technical architects, software developers, and other experts. Rocket® software has offices in Australia and Japan, as well as China and India.

Returning to the other major theme: security. I got the feeling that, in the past, organizations here may have suffered from a lack of attention. They were perhaps seen as a poor relation, and didn’t get the attention they warranted from consultancy and software firms, who maybe didn’t see the market as important enough? Whatever the reason, many people I spoke to, in Australia at least, had not previously had easy access to the type of skills and services that we provide in the security space. Which is odd, because these organizations are often massive mainframe users, and can play a central role in national economies. There haven’t been people on the ground in this space to make a real difference. We want to change that. (I should add that there are, of course, variations across the region. Singapore, for example, has a mature financial services sector, including cyber. Some parts of APAC have received a higher degree of cyber security interest and support, perhaps based on their links with North America).

Anyway, I was asked a great many questions about our Security Assessments and Penetration Testing services. All of the organizations we met were interested in accessing some kind of cyber security skills and services. So there’s clearly an appetite for organizations to have their security status reviewed, validated if possible, and for any necessary steps to be taken to make sure their policies, procedures and protections are up to scratch in the current threat landscape.

And there’s increasing pressure from government and regulators, too. In November last year, for example, the Australian government released its 2023-2030 Cyber Security Strategy, which describes itself as “game changing” for Australian cyber security. It talks about shifting cyber from “a technical topic to whole-of-nation endeavor.” Elements include safer technology, better protected critical infrastructure, and delivering a more resilient region in general. Change is afoot, and I’m confident that Vertali can help to make that change happen: providing organizations with an opportunity to check, update and, I think, to radically enhance their security stance.

We’ll be delivering first from our regional base in Australia, then building out our infrastructure and regional resources in countries throughout Asia Pacific. We already have a significant project running at a multinational banking and financial services client. And in terms of resourcing, if there aren’t the right skills available locally, we can draw on our worldwide network. At the same time, Vertali APAC has a longstanding Grey Pool© of experienced practitioners we can call in.

One final word on resourcing: If you’re reading this and are interested in joining the growing team at Vertali APAC, we’re always on the look-out for talented people. Take a look at our current opportunities.

A global thought leader and international speaker in mainframe security and technology, and passionate advocate of all things Z, Mark Wilson is Vertali’s Technical Director. He has more than 40 years’ experience across numerous industries and diverse mainframe environments. Mark is also Region Manager for Guide Share Europe (GSE) UK, and has recently been shortlisted for two West Midlands Leadership Awards in the UK.