By Business & Finance 
Paul Hogan, CTO and Pat Larkin, CEO of Ward Solutions.
Security provider Ward Solutions today announced the creation of 22 new jobs at its Dublin and Belfast offices. These jobs are being created as part of a new €1.8m investment to fund significant expansion and upgrade of all services delivered in Ward’s Security Operations Centre in Citywest, Dublin. This includes the enhancement of services such as managed security, digital forensics, e-Discovery and security analytics.
Founded in 1999, Ward Solutions provides a comprehensive range of information security services to more than 300 customers across the island of Ireland. Key services include security consultancy, secure managed services and software development.
Ward Solutions will begin recruitment immediately and will have all 22 new employees on board within two years. This will bring total employee numbers to 80 before the end of 2016. 16 of the new hires will be based in Citywest, Dublin and 6 will be based in its new office in Belfast city centre. The new roles will include information security engineers, developers, information security consultants, customer services and sales positions.
The investment is focused on all areas where Ward is experiencing and anticipating growth. This includes adding significant capability to its security operations and secure managed services centre, which is being equipped with highly advanced information security technologies. This includes risk assessment, monitoring, analysis and remediation capabilities, identity and access management, online policy and compliance management, as well as the key personnel to deliver the services securely.
Reflecting the increasing compliance and litigation demand, Ward is also enhancing its digital forensics, e-Discovery and security analytics services at both a platform and capabilities level.
Ward Solutions has experienced an average year-on-year growth rate of 20% over the past two years and predicts that this growth will accelerate further to 30% per annum for the next two years. It expects to achieve revenues in excess of €10M by 2016.
While most of Ward’s existing customer base is in the Republic of Ireland, it sees significant growth opportunities in Northern Ireland, following the opening of its new Belfast office. Ward also serves a small number of customers in Britain and will target considerable growth in the UK market over the next two years.
Ward’s customer base includes a wide range of private and public sector organisations, such as CIE, Vodafone, National College of Ireland, Bord Gáis, Fleetmatics and the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.
Pat Larkin, CEO, Ward Solutions, comments: “This investment in new employees, technologies and services will provide us with a very solid and scalable platform to achieve our aggressive growth plans. There has been a huge rise in demand for our services as the security threat landscape has continued to evolve and become increasingly difficult for businesses to manage. Customers like the fact that they deal with a provider who can deliver on all of their information security requirements.”
“We have the largest and most capable team of information security resources in Ireland and can mobilise quickly to solve any IT security problem. We continuously invest a lot of time and budget in R&D, developing new solutions to increase our customers’ security and compliance, and reduce the complexities caused by information security management and incidents. We’re really looking forward to bringing in new talent to our Dublin and Belfast offices to add to our existing highly experienced team. By the end of this investment, we will have the largest information security resource on the island, with the widest range of capabilities.”
