Q & A with Marko Tomic, Assignar CTO

At SafeStack, our mission is to provide high-quality, people-focused online cyber security education for teams in organizations across the globe. In this rapidly changing world, we set a direction for cyber security with care, consideration, and empowerment. We love seeing our customers getting outstanding results from our cyber security programs, and Assignar is one of them.

In this interview, we asked Assignar's CTO Marko Tomic how and why they chose SafeStack, what they were looking for in a solution, and how they introduced our cyber security training to their team. Marko also shares how this training has helped their team achieve learning and development goals and meet compliance requirements.

About Assignar

Can you please give a brief description of your company?

Assignar is a cloud-based operations platform for construction contractors. We’re helping the construction industry improve efficiency and increase safety. This leads to higher profitability, better workplace conditions, and improved wellbeing.

How big is your team?

We have a growing team of 120 people, distributed across Australia, New Zealand, the US, and Canada.

How many people on your team use our training programs?

Our entire technology team uses various training programs, including SafeStack's Secure Development and Security  Awareness programs.

Looking for a suitable solution

How did you first hear about SafeStack?

SafeStack was first recommended to us by one of our colleagues. We asked for an introduction, and I was lucky enough to speak with Laura, who gave us an excellent demo of the product.

What challenges did you face in your organization that triggered a need for a change?

Creating a secure development training pathway was something we tried to do ourselves. It took us a very long time to even get started. We found it very distracting from our core focus, which is to build technology solutions for our customers in the construction industry.SafeStack provided us with a training program blueprint that we were able to adapt and roll out across the team very quickly. Most importantly, it hasn’t distracted us from our daily routines. The content is fun and educational, and we get to do it in our spare time.

What trends in your industry drove the need to use SafeStack?

The world has changed a lot over the past two years. Since the emergence of distributed working arrangements, the need for cyber security awareness and practices has increased dramatically. SafeStack couldn’t have come to us at a better time.

What were you looking for in a solution?

We were looking for a solution with learning pathways, hands-on labs and assessments, and a community that allows us to collaborate with other like-minded organizations. We also look at the team behind the product that can support us. SafeStack’s team has been nothing short of amazing. We love working with them.

What made our solution stand out over others that you researched?

Most of the content we’ve seen in the market was very unstructured and unmotivating to learn. We couldn’t find anything that was easy to digest while being technical enough for our teams to find it interesting. SafeStack has a perfect balance.

What features of our online training programs were the most appealing?

We really like training pathways and small, “snackable” pieces of content in video format. The average attention span for humans starts to drop after 20 minutes, and we like how all videos are well under 20 minutes. I’m sure this is by design :-)We also like progress reports where we can see how we’re tracking as a team towards achieving our educational goals.

Introducing the programs

How did you introduce our training programs to your team?

We’re extremely fortunate to have a team of passionate people that really believe in our culture of continuous improvement. It didn’t take much convincing to propose another way to gain additional domain knowledge that’s important and rewarding for everyone’s career.

What was the initial reaction to our product?

The initial reaction was that the content was very easy to digest and fun to watch. That’s not something you normally hear someone say about cyber security awareness training, right?

How SafeStack has helped Assignar

How have SafeStack programs helped your organization since you introduced them?

As an organization, we’ve set some learning and development goals for our team. Some of those goals are related to people’s career goals, and some are related to company compliance objectives. SafeStack enabled us to achieve both of these goals relatively quickly.

Has this solution saved money or increased productivity?

It depends on how you look at it. We look at SafeStack as a meaningful investment for our team. We didn’t purchase it to save money. Although, if you take into consideration the time that it takes to create such programs internally, then we’ve definitely saved a few coins by implementing SafeStack.

Are there any specific improvements you’ve noticed?

We’ve had 85% of our technology organization complete the security awareness training within the first month of rolling out the platform. This was a great achievement for us as a team, and we’re now shooting for 100%.

What plans do you have to use SafeStack programs in the future?

We’d like to leverage the Secure Development community seminars a lot more in the future. They’re valuable sources of information and education that’s very relevant to us. Our challenges and goals are very similar to any other SaaS company that treats security and people development very seriously.

We hope you've enjoyed hearing from Marko about why Assignar chose SafeStack and how our training has helped them meet their goals. If you'd like to try our programs out for yourself, get started for free today.