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Centripetal’s David Silke tells Vish Gain how challenges faced by cybersecurity companies in Galway are offset by the strength – and variety – of its tech ecosystem.
This has been a big week for Centripetal. The US-based cybersecurity company has just been announced as the official cybernetwork security partner for Boston Red Sox, one of the most iconic baseball teams in the US.
Headquartered in Virginia, Centripetal uses intelligence to protect networks when it comes to cybersecurity and the threats faced by sectors ranging from healthcare and education to finance and, of course, sports. It was founded 15 years ago and has offices in New Hampshire and Galway.
“As a company, data is your most important asset,” says David Silke, chief marketing officer at Centripetal, who works from Platform94 (formerly the Galway Technology Centre) that is part of the Connected Hubs national network of co-working spaces.
“But it can also be your greatest liability if you haven’t taken the time to make sure that you have adequate protection in place.”
Cybersecurity talent crunch
Silke, who was wearing a Boston Red Sox jersey during the interview, is also the managing director of Centripetal in Europe as the company looks to expand its operations in the continent.
“There are companies around the world that monitor threats that are happening in cybersecurity all the time. That can add up into billions and billions and billions of data points,” Silke explains.
“We as a company managed to bring all this information together onto a solution that we call CleanInternet. We provide that as a solution for our customers and we proactively use that intelligence to literally shield your network from an attack before it gets in there.”
Last May, Centripetal opened a new office in Galway, home to its EMEA base, and created 50 cybersecurity-related jobs across security analysis, network operations, engineering, marketing and sales. But one of the most chronic challenges cybersecurity companies have been facing for a long time now is a talent crunch.
“I think it’s well-known that in cybersecurity in general, there must be a high number of unfilled jobs so there’s plenty of options out there if you’re interested in a career in cybersecurity. It’s more challenging if you’re an enterprise trying to hire cybersecurity staff,” Silke says.
“I think it’s very, very difficult for companies that are trying to set up, for example, security operation centres – either on larger scale or even smaller enterprises – because those resources are very, very difficult to find. You need to have somebody who understands the network, the operations, the security analysts, the security stack in large amounts of detail.
“And that’s becoming a more and more challenging and complex job because you have to manage the network, and you have to manage security and you have to manage all your devices all at the same time.”
Thankfully for Centripetal, basing its European HQ in Ireland – and particularly Galway – has spelled good news in the talent space, according to Silke.
Galway and Connected Hubs
As an English-speaking country in the European Union, Ireland was a no-brainer for the company. But the real attraction was the wealth of talent available on this island, not just in cybersecurity but also on the management, sale and marketing side.
“Galway was chosen for the strength of its ecosystem. The universities are very proactive when it comes to working with industry – they’ve set up two new master’s programmes focusing on cybersecurity. But there’s always been a great technology hub in Galway, which has been home to a cluster of leading technology companies for years,” Silke goes on.
“Galway’s got an ecosystem of intelligence, where you’ve got access to not just the ecosystem of technology, you’ve got the ecosystem of people and the universities and academia. But you also have an ecosystem of creativity, where you see the arts and you see festivals, and you see that balance between not just the intelligence and technology, but creativity.”
Working at Connected Hubs, for Silke, is all about the scale it offers.
He started with a single office in September 2022 at what was then known as the Galway Technology Centre (GTC), which was soon scaled up to an office with six people. When the GTC became Platform94, the Centripetal team moved within the same building into a bigger space.
“And that was all done in conjunction with the hub in terms of what were our needs, what were the facilities that we were looking for. The other piece is just access to the ecosystem of people,” Silke says.
“Yesterday, for example, the ambassador for Great Britain was in Platform94. Myself and another five or six member companies had the opportunity just to sit and talk about expansion into the UK. And what the clusters offer you is that support. You might be a single person, or you might be a small company that’s really trying to figure out the Ireland landscape.
“I really do think when Platform94 and Connected Hubs speak about scale, it really isn’t just the physical scale. It’s also the ability to scale your business with their support, and we have nothing but gratitude for that. It’s been brilliant.”
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