10 Things You Didn’t Know about Joshua Motta

Joshua Motta is one of the co-founders of Coalition. For those who are unfamiliar, said company provides interested parties with both cyber security and cyber liability insurance. Currently, Motta is the CEO, meaning that he is responsible for overseeing Coalition’s operations as well.

1. Has an AB Degree

It is interesting to note that Motta has an AB degree rather than a BA degree. In practical terms, the two degrees tend to be more-or-less the same. After all, AB stands for artium baccalaureus, which is just the Latin for Bachelor of Arts. Often-times, AB degrees are carry-overs from earlier times when Latin was the language of international scholarship for the western world. Something that started fading in the 18th century.

2. Went to the University of Chicago

In any case, Motta went to the University of Chicago, which is considered to be one of the best universities in the United States and beyond. This is shown by how there are multiple fields with so-called Chicago schools. In particular, people might have heard of the Chicago school of economics, which is famous for its rejection of Keynesianism in preference for monetarism. Having said that, it is important to note that said school of thought is a living school of thought, meaning that it has continued to change over time.

3. Member of Phi Beta Kappa

During his time at the University of Chicago, Motta was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Said honor society is notable for a number of reasons. For example, it is the single oldest academic honor society that can be found in the United States, having been founded at the College of William and Mary in 1776. Similarly, Phi Beta Kappa is one of the most prestigious academic honor societies in the United States as well, not least because of its selectiveness.

4. Started Out at Microsoft

Career-wise, Motta started out at Microsoft. In those times, he was the company’s youngest hire, which says quite a bit about his capabilities. Regardless, Motta continued to build up a formidable technical background by working for Sprint, Honeywell, and even the CIA.

5. Became Involved in Finance

As mentioned earlier, Coalition provides cyber liability insurance, which in turn, means that it is very much involved in risk management. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Motta spent a fair amount of time working in finance as well. At various points in time, he worked in banking, private equity, and hedge funds as an adviser, a quant, and an investor. Risk management is extremely important in finance. After all, the identification, analysis, and mitigation of risks are some of the most fundamental processes in financial matters, without which financial organizations wouldn’t be able to function at all. Imagine the probable consequences of making investments without knowing anything about the chances of it falling through.

6. Saw Cybersecurity as a Risk Management Problem

Speaking of which, risk management is connected to Motta’s reason for co-founding Coalition. Often-times, people see cybersecurity as a technological problem. Essentially, new cybersecurity threats are being created on a constant basis, so cybersecurity experts need to create new counters for those new cybersecurity threats. As such, it is common for people to perceive something of an arms race in the field. However, Motta was interesting in that he thought that this was wrong. As far as he was concerned, cybersecurity wasn’t a technological problem. Instead, it was a risk management problem. Moreover, Motta wasn’t the only one who thought this way, as shown by his teaming up with the other co-founder John Hering.

7. Saw a Need to Democratize Access to Cybersecurity Tools

Motta and Hering saw a need to democratize access to cybersecurity tools. Simply put, cybersecurity is a fast-changing field. As such, remaining on the cutting edge of things requires a great deal of expertise and experience, which are quite expensive to say the least. Thanks to that, sophisticated cybersecurity is often seen as being beyond the means of smaller and even medium-sized businesses, which can’t afford to dedicate a huge amount of resources to this in the way that their bigger and better-established counterparts can. Coalition exists for the purpose of making sophisticated cybersecurity available to a wider range of users than before.

8. Sees Getting the Right Talent As a Huge Problem

From an organizational perspective, Motta continues to see getting the right talent as a huge problem. This makes sense for tech companies. After all, there are businesses out there that can manage even when they see a regular stream of employees entering and exiting. However, a lot of tech companies can’t be counted among them because they are reliant on high-skill labor that is nowhere near that replaceable. On top of that, every entry and every exit is a disruption, meaning that there are very real costs to a high turnover rate.

9. Sees Predicting the Future As Another Huge Problem

In Motta’s opinion, another huge problem would be predicting the future, which is always difficult but nonetheless critical for someone who is involved in the insurance business. Such companies don’t just need to keep up with the changing times. If they want to excel, they also need to be able to predict those changes before they happen, thus enabling themselves to capitalize on the emerging opportunities while also protecting themselves from the emerging threats.

10. Sees Ransomware As a Huge Threat

Currently, Motta sees ransomware as a huge threat in cybersecurity, not least because it is evolving. Traditionally speaking, if that can even be said about ransomware, such attacks disrupted revenue-earning operations by holding the data hostage. However, ransomware attacks are taking on new forms as well, with an excellent example being threatening to reveal sensitive information. Something that can be absolutely devastating for a company’s competitiveness. Motta’s company is also notable for being one of the first companies to pay attention to the physical damage that can be caused by such attacks, thus showing that they are doing their best to remain on the cutting edge of things.