Richard Stocks
Summary
Richard is a highly skilled and experienced IT security professional with over 20 years’ industry experience. He has a strong track record of working at the executive level in large enterprises, with resellers and integrators, and multinational security vendors.
Richard is comfortable discussing strategy with the C-suite, diving deep into the technology stack with engineers, or delivering a conference session to several hundred attendees. He has presented at conferences such as AusCERT and Cybercon.
When not educating people on why good password hygiene is so important, Richard can usually be found either on top of a motorcycle or behind a camera.
Experience
Technical Director (Aisa Pacific & Japan) at Cymulate
January 2024 to September 2024
At Cymulate, Richard was tasked with being the first technical resource in the region, supporting the sales teams in Australia and Singapore, as well as partners across the region, to deliver technical enablement and first class proof-of-vision activities. As a member of a small team, the scope of responsibilties is broad: a typical day could start with a product demo for a prospect, followed by a technical enablement session for a partner, before pivoting into a PoV for the afternoon.
Key achievements include net-new sales into a major media company in Singapore, insurance sector in Hong Kong, and banking institutions in Australia, Thailand and Indonesia.
Threat Intelligence Specialist at Rapid7
December 2021 to January 2024
Richard joined Rapid7 to build and run their theat intelligence business for Australia and New Zealand, following the acquisition of IntSights. Responsibilities included defining the go-to-market strategy, and then working with the greater team (account executives, business development representatives and customer success) and channel partners to grow new business and retain customers.
Key successes included international mining companies, retailers and local, state and federal government agencies.
Senior Sales Engineer at Recorded Future
August 2020 to December 2021
As a senior sales engineer, Richard was responsible for translating end user requirements into technical outcomes, and then providing product demonstrations and proof-of-value to match those requirements.
As a way to get prospects some guided hands-on experience with the Recorded Future platform, Richard deployed a capture-the-flag solution based on an open-source framework, with the flags based on intelligence that could be discovered using the appropriate queries. This was designed to allow prospects to discover the capabilities in a fun and lightly competitive environment. This proved to be popular and successful, and is still utilised by Recorded Future today.
Key successes included tech wins and subsquent deals with two of the big four banks in Australia.
Channel Solution Architect at Symantec
August 2014 to December 2019
Originally employed by Blue Coat Systems (prior to the acquisition by Symantec), Richards role was to educate focus partners and distributors in Australia and New Zealand on the Blue Coat portfolio. This covered everything from initial discovery and mapping business requirements to technology through to how to install, configure and run.
After Blue Coat was acquired by Symantec, Richard continued in this role, albeit with an expanded portfolio. In addition, he recognised that there was an internal capability gap with sellers being able to correctly size and quote solutions, often placing an additional burden on the SE team. He developed a proof-of-concept iPhone application that presented a simple step-by-step configuration tool. This app was adopted by the business, and Richard then acted as the product manager, with a development team who turned his concept into a production application with direct interfaces into Salesforce.
Richard then extended this work, becoming a founding member of a global business transformation team. His work with that team focused on distributor and reseller interfaces to Symantec, streamlining processes such as onboarding and deal registration.
Other
Previous vendor roles have included sales engineer and channel sales engineer (Websense, Zscaler, Check Point) and post-sales technical lead (Crossbeam Systems). Consulting roles have included Intel Solution Services and Com Tech Communications.
On the customer side of the fence, Richard was the Infrastructure Manager at PBL Gaming and the Data Security Manager at Crown Casino.
Richard is also currently an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Information Technology school in the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Built Environment at Deakin University.