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Originally written for Jacksonville Business Journal by James Cannon

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. –For the past five years, the Jacksonville Business Journal has honored some of the men and women whose technology leadership has helped local organizations grow, deal with challenges and shape the future.

We’re glad to have this opportunity to spotlight these leaders and their accomplishments, and we look forward to seeing the impact they and their organizations have on the community in the future.

Name: Ben Finke

Company: OnDefend

Title: Co-Founder and CTO

How has your leadership helped your organization grow? Hard work, consistency, curiosity, a positive attitude, and a desire to grow. All qualities that are needed to ensure an organizations growth. I will start by saying, the product and services our company offers has such an important need in every sector of business. A good product, like BlindSPOT will naturally lead to business growth but it was the above attributes that led to this product being built successfully and my continued desire to grow to teach others about it.

As the BlindSPOT product has gained new capabilities and we’ve expanded the content available we’ve added new customers, allowing us to reinvest that into more development and content capacity. Over the years our company has grown in employee count, financial revenue, and brand awareness. My willingness to continue to teach others and continually push the envelope has led us to where we are today and I know will only push is further to come.

What is your greatest career accomplishment? I’ve been very fortunate to work on several amazing projects and with some amazing people over my career, but in 2021 we were asked to help secure the upcoming FIFA World Cup in Qatar. In cybersecurity you’re not always allowed to mention the companies or organizations you’re working with for security reasons. This was one of those projects that for well over a year, my team worked tirelessly to make this event a success. It was one of those projects that if we did not do our job correctly, one of the most famous sporting events in the world would be in trouble. The OnDefend name was at stake, and we knew we had to get it right. In cybersecurity, no news is good news. The fact, that a cyber-attack on a global stage didn’t hit the news means we did our job correctly. To know that our company has reached a level to be selected for that kind of project and pull it off successfully is something I could have only dreamed of when I started my career.

OnDefend Media Contact: Lauren Verno, Lauren.verno@ondefend.com