Cybersecurity Leader Sean Duca exits Vendor Land after 25 years, Launches Boutique Executive Advisory Firm

Posted: Monday, Mar 16

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Cybersecurity Leader Sean Duca exits Vendor Land after 25 years, Launches Boutique Executive Advisory Firm

Karissa Breen, more commonly known as KB, is crowned a LinkedIn ‘Top Voice in Technology’, and widely recognised across the global cybersecurity industry. A serial entrepreneur, she is the co-founder of the TMFE Group, a portfolio of cybersecurity-focused businesses spanning an industry-leading media platform, a specialist marketing agency, a content production studio, and the executive headhunting firm, MercSec. Now based in the United States, KB oversees US editorial operations and leads the expansion of the group’s media footprint across North America, while maintaining a strong presence in Australia, and the broader global market. She is the former Producer and Host of the streaming show 2Fa.tv, and currently sits at the helm of journalism for the group’s flagship arm, KBI.Media, the independent cybersecurity media company. As a cybersecurity investigative journalist, KB hosts her globally-renowned podcast, KBKast, where she interviews leading cybersecurity practitioners, CISOs, government officials including heads-of-state, and industry pioneers from around the world. The podcast has been downloaded in over 65 countries with more than 400,000 global downloads, influencing billions of dollars in cybersecurity budgets. KB is known for asking the hard questions and extracting real, commercially relevant insights. Her approach provides an uncoloured, strategic lens on the evolving cybersecurity landscape, demystifying complex security issues and translating them into practical intelligence for executives navigating risk, regulation, and rapid technological change.

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Cybersecurity Leader Sean Duca exits Vendor Land after 25 years, Launches Boutique Executive Advisory Firm

From Karissa Breen

After more than two decades inside the global technology vendor ecosystem, cybersecurity heavyweight Sean Duca is stepping out on his own.

Duca, most recently Chief Technology Officer for Customer Experience at Cisco, has officially launched The Duca Group, a boutique executive advisory firm designed to help boards, C-suite leaders and Founders make informed decisions across AI governance, cybersecurity and enterprise transformation.

The move marks a major shift for one of the industry’s most recognisable technology leaders across Asia Pacific, who has spent over 25 years operating at the intersection of cybersecurity strategy, enterprise risk and vendor technology leadership.

Unlike traditional consulting firms that rely on large teams and framework driven methodologies, The Duca Group is positioning itself as a direct access advisory model, with every engagement led personally by Duca.

“Most organisations don’t have a framework problem. They have a judgement problem,” Duca said. “The Duca Group was created to help leaders make those decisions.”

The firm aims to provide high touch strategic guidance for executives who are finding their feet around artificial intelligence, cyber risk and enterprise scale transformation, these are areas where boardrooms need trusted advisors who understand both the technical and leadership dimensions of risk.

Duca said the accelerating pace of technological change, particularly across AI and cybersecurity has fundamentally outgrown many traditional advisory structures and those structures need to change.

“The pace of change in AI and cybersecurity has outstripped most advisory models,” he said. “Leaders need someone who can move with them.”

Industry insiders say the launch reflects a broader trend of senior technology leaders moving beyond large vendor organisations into independent advisory roles, where experience and real world judgment are often valued more than traditional consulting frameworks.

For Duca, the move is about focusing wholly and solely on the strategic decisions happening inside boardrooms. After 25 years in vendor land, Duca has headed into a new direction of pioneering his own firm and put his knowledge where it matters.