A co-founder of the managed security service RedShield, Sam Pickles has been leading the company’s technology strategy since its inception almost a decade ago.

Pickles is passionate about cybersecurity and highlights the growing threat of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on enterprises. 

“In 2021, New Zealand experienced a number of major attacks which affected many leading NZ organisations. Furthermore, DDoS attacks are increasingly sophisticated. Two years ago, the largest attacks peaked at 300,000 HTTPS requests per second; today it has increased to over 1 million HTTPS requests per second,” he says.

Pickles and the team this year rolled out  a brand-new technology which leverages Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing capabilities to scale its web application security services, and to launch next-generation architecture for DDoS mitigation. 

RedShield's new architecture includes always-on, DDoS defence capabilities, with auto-detection and auto-scaling attack mitigation. If an attack occurs, the system recognises the volume of the attack and scales protection to meet the threat traffic head-on. 

In addition, RedShield now leverages AWS Global Accelerator, a networking service that improves the performance of users’ traffic by up to 60% using AWS's global network infrastructure, allowing RedShield to deliver its solutions to customers with greater speed and reliability, according to Pickles.  

“By scaling its expert web application security services on AWS cloud, RedShield can better respond to the changing threat landscape where DDoS attacks are increasingly sophisticated,” says Pickles.

The partnership with AWS has been crucial for RedShield’s revenue growth over the past 12 months, says Pickles, and the company’s projected expansion for the next year. It has also enabled the business to enter new vertical markets including military and web content management systems. 

Gaining new perspectives 

Pickles says one of his biggest regrets is waiting so long to pursue a formal business school education, having focused for so long on technology and getting his company off the ground.

He cites cost, scarcity of time, and an intent focus on technology as reasons that had made it seem unnecessary prior. 

“Furthermore, the first few years as an entrepreneur were marked by extremely long hours and burnout, which presented an apparent limitation to my ability to study then.  

“As our board of directors grew, and I held increasing responsibility for business strategy and stakeholder engagement, I realised the importance of addressing knowledge gaps about running an enterprise.” 

He enrolled in a business school and says it really helped sharpen his business management skills and gave him a new perspective.

“The mistake here is how long it took to focus on delegation and the training of my team, to free up my time. That would have allowed me to lift my sights and focus on higher-level strategy and growth plans sooner.” reflects Pickles.