Marcus Richards
Data Access Governance Made Simple. Torsion helps businesses get visibility and control of ‘who has access to what’ among large, dynamic collections of files and folders.
Tell us about yourself?
I spent a 15-year career as a consultant, specializing in secure information management. I built up a deep understanding of the nature of information flow and lifecycle in organisations, and saw the challenge and enormous consequences of controlling data access at scale in almost every consulting client I ever had.
Prior to that, I was a software developer with a Computer Science degree. But after university I quickly found myself attracted to the business side of IT, not just the technical. Consulting was a great way to straddle the fence between IT and business.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Take care of yourself, its a marathon not a sprint!
What problem does your business solve?
In almost every medium-large organisation using cloud-based systems for collaboration and data storage, ‘who has access to what’ files and information always decays out of control over time.
Inappropriate access to sensitive data is a leading root-cause of catastrophic cyber security breaches. And demonstrating good control of access to sensitive under audit is a huge challenge for compliance.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
Torsion grew out of my experiences as a consultant, specialising in secure information management. Not once did I ever see an effective solution to this ubiquitous problem.
The status-quo solutions and processes were simply ineffective – the problem still happens whether customers bought them or not.
Eventually I had the ‘2am lightblub moment’ idea for how I could approach the problem in an entirely new way. I envisaged a solution which I knew would be highly effective, and which would succeed where others had failed.
So convinced I was of the potential of this idea, that I decided to leave my consulting career behind, to start company and built it myself.
What is your magic sauce?
Business-focused automation, instead of IT-focused manual tools.
We start by recognising that this is a business problem, not an IT problem – which requires a business-focused solution, not another IT tool.
We then recognise that business people are busy! So, we keep their experience so simple that 95% of the time, they barely even realise they’re doing something.
Using intelligent automation, not manual tools, Torsion precisely automates control of ‘who has access to what’, at massive scale, in real time, on auto-pilot.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Continuing to growing the business and solution, working with more and larger customers and partners around the world.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Convincing investors to fund us during the early days when our remarkably large and complex technology was still years away from being ready to sell to customers.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
We’re looking for Microsoft-focused consultancies to work with us to help their customers achieve Data Access Governance Made Simple. Get visibility and control of ‘who has access to what’ to keep data secure, and simplify compliance. You can reach us at [email protected] or www.torsionis.com
