IT Life: Paul Calatayud, Firemon CTO

What is your role and who do you work for?

CTO for FireMon

How long have you been in IT?

I have been in IT for 17 years and previously worked as a CISO for a healthcare company.

What is your most interesting project to date?

My most interesting project to date has to be my role with FireMon, where I am working to evolve the company’s products for large scale enterprise customers dealing with cyber issues.

What is your biggest challenge at the moment?

My biggest challenge is finding a way to tap into the wealth of knowledge and experience my customers have in order to ensure we build products that address their needs.

What technology were you working with ten years ago?

Ten years ago, I was working as a cyber security architect for a defence company working on deploying Bluecoat web content filtering into the company.

What is your favourite technology of all time?

My favourite enterprise technology of all time has to be virtualisation. It was exciting to learn and it continues to revolutionise the way we compute and support enterprises.

How will the Internet of Things affect your organisation?

As a company that provides cyber security products to our customers, Internet of Things plays an interesting role in our company. We need to adapt and understand that IoT is making its way into enterprises, as I like to call it: the Internet of Malicious things.

What smartphone do you use?

I use an IPhone 7 as my smart phone, I get tempted from time to time to look at other platforms, but the fact I have invested in many programs on the Apple Store makes it hard to walk away from.

What three apps could you not live without?

It would be hard to not live without Outlook as it is such a critical part of my way of communication. Second would be MS PowerPoint, and third would be Netflix.

What new technology are you most excited for a) your business and b) yourself?

New technologies I am excited for in my personal life are self driving cars. I am looking forward to automotive technology broadening in such a way that we will look back and tell stories of how Grandpa used to have to touch the steering wheel –  if they even know what that is!

Within business, I am looking forward to artificial intelligence. It will be similar in impact to industries as the internet has been for the last twenty years.

If you weren’t doing the job you do now, what would you be doing?

If I was not in my current job, I would most likely be doing some sort of building architect or carpentry. I am handy with tools and auto CAD and 3-D modelling and could see myself designing buildings and homes.