Investor Spotlight: ReliaQuest


July 16, 2018



ReliaQuest is fundamentally reshaping the way that enterprises approach cyber security by offering a unique blend of technology and services to reduce the complexity of managing the overall security program while optimizing processes to make security teams more efficient. The ReliaQuest team acts as a guide to help large organizations align people, processes, and technology to seamlessly drive critical business outcomes. ReliaQuest’s model is recognized by industry experts as the standard for large and complex organizations.

Brian Murphy is the founder and CEO of ReliaQuest. Over the past 11 years, Murphy has grown ReliaQuest into one of the industry’s leading IT security providers. His focus on employee development and culture have earned ReliaQuest recognition as a “Great Place to Work” by numerous publications, including Fortune Magazine. Due in part to his approach, and in part to the success of ReliaQuest, Murphy was named an EY Entrepreneur of the Year for the state of Florida for 2017.

Prior to founding ReliaQuest, Brian served as a Managing Director for a regional consulting firm and has held various senior positions in Corporate Finance and Accounting. He began his career as a Management Consultant with PwC. He is a graduate of Florida State University with degrees in Accounting and Finance.

Reliaquest has experienced tremendous growth over the last few years. What has led to this growth?

This year ReliaQuest will be 11 years old. We have always been a rapid growth organization, so while it might be more visible externally over the past few years, it isn’t anything new internally. Our focus is key to our growth. We don’t chase trends or buzz words – instead, we focus on executing in our space and work on getting a little bit better every day.

Reliaquest has been recognized for its outstanding workplace culture. How has Reliaquest cultivated its culture and maintained it during times of significant growth?

The values that drove our decision making in our first year of business are the same values that drive our decision making today, which allows for consistency and transparency regardless of how fast we grow. Our values of Accountable, Helpful, Adaptable, and Focused guide our decision-making process at every level of the organization, making it easy for our team members to work independently and make the decisions that need to be made. Our focus on developing people, teams, and technology enables us to promote from within, offering opportunity to our teams and continuity to our business. We don’t allow rapid growth to be an excuse for veering from the values and the mindset that makes ReliaQuest what it is today and in the future. Rapid growth is an outcome of our culture and mindset, not the goal of the organization.

How does Reliaquest work with local organizations and educational institutions to plan and prepare for future talent needs?

ReliaQuest is always hiring so it is key that we have relationships with not just state and local universities, but also universities throughout the United States. We work with various organizations to understand how we can integrate ReliaQuest University into what the professionals already know, allowing us to fill in any gaps that exist to ensure those individuals will be successful in their career with ReliaQuest regardless of their role or title. ReliaQuest has invested millions of dollars in developing proprietary simulation environments to create real-world scenarios so that regardless of the experience level of the individual, when they start at RQ we can teach them what they need to know to be successful in cyber security if they have the right attitude, energy, and effort. As we continue to partner with various educational institutions, we are looking at ways to supplement the learning experience the students are getting with additional exposure to some of the real-world simulations we have developed at RQ to make them ready to start their career. Our support of programs like Junior Achievement revolve around us wanting to show, from a young age, the opportunities and importance of cyber security.

How does Tampa’s veteran population contribute to Tampa’s talent pool, particularly in terms of IT security?
Tampa’s veteran population is an important part of our growth strategy. Tampa has a reputation for supporting the military, so it helps us to recruit men and women who are serving or previously served to relocate to Tampa and start with ReliaQuest. Overall the support of the military from our community makes it easier as an employer to hire and retain veterans.

The Tampa market is becoming a hub for the IT and data security industries. What has contributed to this development, and how does having a strong IT and security sector impact the Tampa market?

IT Security is one of the most relevant technical challenges of our time. I think that while Tampa is a piece of the overall market, most communities are embracing cyber security and we are seeing growth across the board throughout the US and the EU. We have a large concentration of cyber security professionals in our Security Operations Centers in Tampa, Las Vegas, and Dublin, which bring high wage jobs and great opportunity for growth to those communities. This growth also fuels jobs across the company that may not be technical in nature but exist and impact the growth of the IT Security market daily. Any time you have a company growing in a sustainable and repeatable way adding high wage jobs in an environment that people can learn and grow in, I think it is a win for the community and we are proud to be headquartered in Tampa.

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