Today we’d like to introduce you to Christo Angelov.
Christo, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I started my business in the fall of 2017. Coming out of college in 2005, I started working for a large consulting company. During this time, I had the opportunity to work with a variety of different companies across numerous industries. This allowed me to build up a good understanding of business process and operations. Information Security appealed to me early on, as it peaked my curiosity. After a decade of learning a lot of valuable lessons, it was time to transition. This led me to a large financial services company in Atlanta. I worked within the Security Operations team for two years. At this time, I decided that I needed to start my own business and transitioned over the next few months. My first full two years have been exciting, educational, a bit stressful, and rewarding. I’m loving the independence and personal growth required to sustain a business.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has been relatively smooth with some bumps along the way. It’s a learning process and sometimes that requires trial and error. The administrative side of running a business requires attention and that can be quick to go on the back burner when things get busy. But it’s important to stay on top of it because playing catchup can eat up a lot of time. Having consistency, rather than feast of famine, in my project pipeline is also an interesting challenge that I’m still navigating. The coronavirus pandemic is the latest example of challenges that arise. While it is a challenge navigating through this time, I am confident that we, as a whole, will come back from this strongly.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Firebrand Security Consulting story. Tell us more about the business.
I provide cybersecurity consulting services to companies. This involves helping them build out their security functions or helping them improve specific security capabilities. There is a lot of fear-based marketing within the cybersecurity industry and I’m most proud of staying away from that. Yes, there are ample challenges, but if we spend more time fixing the problems rather than talking about how bad things are, we may be able to get better. I provide my clients with a shortlist of actionable recommendations rather than try to overwhelm them and promise impossible results. The challenges in the cybersecurity space are there for a reason. For decades, technology and software development didn’t adequately invest in security or didn’t do so until it was too late. There are exceptions to this of course, but they are rare. That is clearly changing in the industry; however, there are many things that need to fixed. Some of them are basic and some of them are complex. The complex ones cannot be resolved until we fix the basic ones.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I’m very grateful for everything, including my luck or lack thereof. At times, things have worked out perfectly with what I can only describe as luck. This includes life situations and business. At times, I’ve had to learn really hard lessons by what appears to be bad luck. I have had luck with landing clients; and I have also missed out on opportunities due to bad luck/timing. At the end of the day, I’m grateful for my good luck and I try my best to learn from my bad luck.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://firebrandsecurity.com
- Email: info@firebrandsecurity.com
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