In busy times we don’t always get the opportunity to get to know each other that well – and no one is busier than our tech team. So we’ve taken 20 minutes to interview David Bradbury, one of our cybersecurity consultants, so you can get to know him better.
Tell us a bit about yourself
I’m based in central Reading having just moved house, sharing with a good friend. When I’m not at BlueFort I spend most of my spare time in the Dodgeball world……and here we go….I started when studying Computer Science at Leicester University and tried the family-favourite sport of rowing. That was fine until I saw the freshers come along, (huge people compared to my 6’ 1” modest frame), and I knew I was going to have to find something else – that and having to consume 6000 calories a day to keep up with the training. After a couple of years on the water, I was invited to join the Dodgeball Sports Society to help make up the numbers a little and I loved it. Since leaving Uni I founded Berkshire Royals with some friends, and am now Club Captain with lots of teams playing nationally and locally. Last year I represented Wales at the World Championships in Austria. It’s a very inclusive sport, but needs organising, so we are currently looking to run a women’s team to play nationally, and we are just about to start Junior Session for 11-16 year olds. Unfortunately, I’m now injured but hoping to recover in time to put myself into contention for the Euro’s in Ireland later this year.
What do you do at BlueFort?
I started as an intern during my placement year at University – they asked if I wanted to do sales or tech, and it was always going to be tech for me. So I started like many others on the helpdesk, and have had a good learning curve about a range of security technologies. When I finished my degree in 2019, BlueFort invited me to join the team full-time and I’ve been here ever since. I progressed quite quickly into helping with deployment work, followed by problem solving and design work. I still action tickets and am on the 24×7 rota, so you might catch me helping customers with things that are broken during the night.
What do you love about your job?
Firstly, it’s a non-contact sport and a welcome break from dodging balls, but mostly I love speaking with customers and getting to know their challenges. Helping solve problems is very rewarding, and as I’m now talking about potential issues and finding solutions, not just speaking to people when things need fixing urgently. I love the fact that we’ve got so many potential technology solutions with our varied portfolio, and my job is to understand how best these might fit.
What does the future hold?
I want to keep helping customers, we are growing quite fast in the current climate and Identity and Cloud Security seem to be hot topics for most customers. The more people I can help solve challenges, the happier I’ll be.
If you could have a super-power, what would it be?
Long debate about invincibility and the merits of that to gain longer life, and whether that’s good or bad ensues. I’m settling on teleportation, as that would give me the power to get to places very quickly and maximise the number of people I could help. Imagine being able to transport all the food waste to every hungry person in the world – that would be worth it.
