Earlier this month we caught up with the Canberra Cyber Hub to talk all things Metadata on the eve of our fifth birthday.
* This article originally featured on canberracyberhub.com.au.
Ticking past its fifth birthday this month, Aristotle Metadata Registry is becoming one of Canberra’s most prominent cyber success stories.
From coffee shops to desk space in the Canberra Innovation Network’s co-working space to now moving into their fifth and largest office space, Aristotle Metadata continues to go from strength to strength with their unique and innovative approach to storing and managing metadata.
We caught up with CEO and co-founder, Sam Spencer, to chat about his experience going from start-up to scale up, and what is in store for Aristotle Metadata in the future.
Can you provide an overview of Aristotle Metadata and what you do?
Aristotle Metadata is a data-focused solutions provider that provides cloud-hosted metadata infrastructure to government agencies and educational institutes globally. Aristotle Metadata’s integrated services include managed cloud hosting and commercial support for the Aristotle Metadata Registry, metadata migration services, and metadata governance consulting.
What are the key cyber security aspects of the Aristotle Metadata Registry?
The Aristotle Metadata Registry improves how data is described by enabling everyone to be involved in the management of data. We help organisations produce more valuable reports, improve management and governance of data definitions, and improve the discovery of corporate knowledge using our sophisticated and user-friendly software.
How did you get into the cyber security industry?
Our company was traditionally focused on data solutions to help organisations make sense of their data through better cataloguing and data asset management. As the technology industry has matured, we have seen the importance of cataloguing data assets as a critical piece of cyber security when protecting data.
To use an analogy, data is like fireworks - beautiful and powerful but very volatile and something that needs to be managed correctly. As recent high-profile data leaks have shown, knowing what data an organisation is responsible for is critical to responding to threats and hacks to understand how data should be protected.
What advice do you have for those seeking a career in the industry?
Cyber and cyber security is a broad tent with a place for everyone from traditional roles, such as data and business analysts and software developers, to communicators such as writers and artists, and even physical security experts. Cyber security and data security are such important topics that everyone needs to be informed about - and this relies on good communication skills. If you are passionate about cyber or security, get involved because there will be a role you can find and endless opportunities available to grow and expand your skillset and career.
At Aristotle Metadata Registry, we are constantly looking for business analysts to help our clients document their data - the first step to managing data security is knowing what data you are responsible for.
What do you see as your customer’s biggest pain point and how do Aristotle Metadata Registry products assist them in addressing these challenges?
Many people we speak with are unaware of the data that their organisation holds - they may be responsible for very sensitive or private data or may have access to very valuable data assets.
We help organisations develop processes to help them find, catalogue and safely stores information about their data in a way that is increases the accuracy of reporting and reduces the time to generate new value from data.
How has your company evolved over the last five years and what have you been most proud of?
Taking the time to reflect, it’s incredible to see how much our company has grown over the last five years. Probably the proudest thing is seeing how the team has grown and evolved in that time period - we’ve had to accommodate some of the most challenging economic conditions, and in that time we’ve never lost sight of our principles and have focused on building good, quality products, and an amazing, attentive team to support our clients.
You recently went to the UK with the Canberra Cyber Hub as part of Austrade’s delegation, what were your key takeaways from this experience, and have any opportunities evolved from this visit?
The biggest takeaway was seeing how large the global market is for data and cyber security platforms. Australia has been a great environment for us to launch our product and seeing global validation as an awarded software exporter gave us insight into our future opportunities.
Thanks to the trip we have been able to start a pilot project with a national-level client in the public-sector healthcare space that is promising to be a long and productive relationship to open doors to the UK and Europe.
What’s next for Aristotle Metadata?
We haven’t begun to tap our growth opportunities, so the sky is the limit. We just signed two contracts with clients in the UK and Ireland and will be returning to the US again soon to continue out market development in North America. We see data culture, data discovery and data security as growth sectors and are making plans to put Canberra on the global stages as a leader in the data sector.
