Richard Stocks

Highly experienced information security professional

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.

A firm believer in helping the next generation, Richard is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Information Technology in the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Built Environment at Deakin University.

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

  • November 2024 to present

    Senior Security Solutions Engineer at Rapid7

    When Cymulate withdraw from Australia and made the team redundant at the end of 2024, Richard took advantage of an open headcount to return to the team at Rapid7 in a sales engineering role.

  • January 2024 to October 2024

    Technical Director (APJ) at Cymulate

    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.

  • December 2021 to January 2024

    Threat Intelligence Specialist at Rapid7

    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.

  • August 2020 to December 2021

    Senior Sales Engineer at Recorded Future

    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.

  • August 2014 to December 2019

    Channel Solution Architect at Symantec

    Originally employed by Blue Coat Systems (prior to the acquisition by Symantec), Richard's 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.