From teaching maths to defining the ethernet and developing innovative products, join us as we quiz our founders on all things cybersecurity and ExactTrak to define their threat profile — the good, the bad, and the ‘to be improved’!
So, I’m John Pragnell, the CTO of ExactTrak. In other words, I’m in charge of development: product development and development engineers amongst others. I also own a manufacturing company, and do a lot of other things — I like to keep busy.
We’ve got a small number of engineers working all over the country. They’re all very experienced, so know what they’re doing. Which means my job really is to come up with the ideas; looking at what we’re doing to see if we could do better, and dreaming about what else we could do. So, I look at the overall system, although I do a lot of the coding myself.
So, I started off teaching maths and computing in the very early days of computing in schools. I got fed up with teaching and went back to university to do an MSC in Computing Systems, which was looking at hardware, software, operating systems and kernels — the whole gamut of electronics. And then I went out into industry and got into some very exciting projects, including joining the 802 committee in America which held plenary sessions to define ethernet, and then security, wifi and more. I also worked on what is now known as broadband. So it was quite an exciting time in data comms, which is where I’ve been all of my life.
Norman Shaw came to me with this wacky idea for a tracker, and asked if I could build it. I did, and they promptly made me an executive director and founder of ExactTrak. And that’s how I got started with them. Even though I’ve not got a background in cybersecurity, security is an integral part of data comms.
We have a whole security ecosystem at ExactTrak, which means we’re selling a range of products that all have to work in harmony to deliver the level of security we’re aiming for. I’m constantly looking at what we can do, how we can enhance our products and offerings to make them better or more secure.
ExactTrak has always been development-run. I come up with an idea, and then we’ve got to establish if there is actually a real need and market for it, before we look into the development and manufacturing approaches. My previous experience in management, accounts and even sales allows me to get involved in all aspects of development.
Lateral thinking. Sales might get in touch and say I’ve been talking to this customer about such and such. I have to think on my feet straight away to work out if we can do that. The key is being able to listen to what they’re asking for and knowing enough about engineering and laws of physics to come up with a solution, or the issues we might need to sort out.
It’s all about being able to translate what sales say they want, what the customer really wants and what that means for our engineers. And then translating all of that into a pathway to real, commercial deliverables.
For me, my strength also comes from being a hardware and software person. It’s important to have that grounding in technical expertise, so that you can keep ahead of the engineers, and bring them all together for a common end. If I can give them the right tools, and the right directions, they’ll just put their heads down and get on. Essentially, I set the direction, and then drive our engineers down that path. Then of course, keeping them fed and watered with lots of coffee!
You could argue that I talk too much!
But in all sincerity, the biggest challenge for ExactTrak is sales and marketing. Although I’m not in that role, I am on the board so it’s still an important aspect for me. We’re in a big market but we’re small, so we have to spend time thinking about how we can get a piece of that market. Really the only way to do that is by being innovative and staying ahead of the game. Unlike the bigger corporations, we can move quickly and offer the products they can’t. Because at the end of the day if we want to be a success, we have to sell!
For me, my strength also comes from being a hardware and software person. It’s important to have that grounding in technical expertise, so that you can keep ahead of the engineers, and bring them all together for a common end. If I can give them the right tools, and the right directions, they’ll just put their heads down and get on. Essentially, I set the direction, and then drive our engineers down that path. Then of course, keeping them fed and watered with lots of coffee!
The biggest threat we’ve got is that everything is now online. Everything is run from computers and comms. And because companies are focused on making this tech as easy as possible for users, there are potential gaps all over the place where people can break in and steal your information.
At the end of the day, the biggest challenge for cybersecurity is not necessarily the tech, but the person using it. And that’s only going to get worse — until there’s some kind of massive crash which forces people to face up to this fundamental problem. We wait for hospitals or generating stations to go down before we acknowledge that there’s a real problem there. And then we stick a band-aid over it, and nothing really changes.
Initially there was little consideration for security by design, and so now people are just putting band-aids over security issues as they come across them.
But we need to be taking a wide lens approach of ‘let’s fix critical issues so that we don’t need to use band-aids at all’. We need to be considering security by design: automated, built-in, at-source preventative security. Right from the start.
We work outside of the operating system. Linux, Windows, Apple… We’re not part of those — we work as an extra bit of hardware that the user can’t get at.
It doesn’t rely on humans, which as we’ve discussed is where many of our security problems lie. And it’s security flexible — one laptop can be used securely in multiple locations. So, user access and restrictions can be changed depending on whether you’re in the office or out and about. It’s secure, cost effective and agile.
Run a VPN, run a malware checker, and don’t click on links in emails! I think the email system has a lot to answer for when it comes to cyber attacks.
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