Malta has been a rising star in the tech world as private and public investment poured into the sector. As the digital field continues expanding, the island is well-positioned to be a global player, with creative leaders looking for the right opportunities to shake things up.

This series catches up with the island’s foremost tech and digital entrepreneurs to understand what they do, and what the future holds.

About yourself, your company and your greatest professional accomplishment to date…

I have been in the ICT industry for almost 30 years and have been witness to the immense change the sector has brought. From humble beginnings of computer use to the hyper connected world we currently live in, I feel honoured to have been present to see this firsthand. This evolution has made our society very dependent on technology and by consequence digital security in general. Although the notion of cyber security is not a new one, the recent well publicised cyber-attacks on myriad institutions have made it a recurring and current theme.

CyberSift is a specialist Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) which uses its own tools and technology to help its customers maintain a secure operating environment. The company operates in various sectors but predominantly financial services. We help organisations visualise and understand their own systems, enabling them to further strengthen their information technology defences, ensuring that data remains intact, confidential and available. There is a big difference between reselling IT products manufactured by other, normally well-funded foreign suppliers and building your own solutions which are able to compete and hold their own on an international level. The cyber security field is a very specialised and competitive one; winning on an international level against much larger players makes me very proud.

What are the latest developments in your sector?

Of course, venturing into a new area is never easy and any organisation does initially need to find its feet and adapt quickly to market demand. Luckily, the IT security challenges faced by organisations have some level of commonality, meaning that our solutions once built for one client are quickly taken up by others. In our space, targeted phishing campaigns are a prevalent issue most are trying to guard against, and a solution for which will soon be offered by CyberSift.

What developments do you foresee for Malta to become a digital island?

Definitely a more formal and structured investor ecosystem is required. Currently, it can best be described as fragmented with little avenues for start-ups to attract top venture capital from overseas. Many of the schemes available locally are intensive on the documentation front and offer little in the way of financing. What I would like to see is more akin to what other EU countries and even Israel are doing to help their start-ups flourish. The Government should chip in by way of investor incentives but not be the one providing the investment. Finally, for the local IT companies that have already ventured on the international scene, this should unlock further assistance to help them grow even further. I do hope to see a local business become a unicorn during my lifetime.

This is the fourth in a series of interviews with Malta's leading tech entrepreneurs. Read the first, with IO-Labs CEO Kristian Zarb Adami, here. Or check out the second, with Thought3D Co-Founder Edward Borg, here.

The third, an interview with Silicon Valletta President Simon Azzopardi, can be found here. And the fourth, with EBO.ai CEO Gege Gatt, can be read here.

This feature was first carried in the 2021 edition of Digital Island.