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What does it take to build a cybersecurity company not once, but twice from the ground up?
In this episode of Cyber Security District, we sit down with Francisco Nina Rente, one of Portugal's most accomplished cybersecurity entrepreneurs. Francisco started his journey as a teenager tinkering with computers and quickly found his way into ethical hacking and open-source security communities. That curiosity became a career, which then led to a company.
His first venture grew from a university incubator into a 250-person operation delivering services across 22 countries, before being acquired by a global security group. After years scaling that business from the inside and taking on roles as country manager, CTO and board member, Francisco stepped away to build again.
This time, the mission is clearer: help organisations stop just detecting threats and start truly recovering from them. Art Resilia was born out of a conviction that the market was shifting from cybersecurity to cyber resilience, and Francisco positioned the company right at the centre of that shift.
Key Takeaways:
- Cyber resilience is about recovery, not just defence
- Focus beats opportunity-chasing, especially in the early days of a startup
- The Commonwealth of a team always comes before individual interest
- Trust-based security communication outlasts fear-based selling every time
- Knowledge remains the core differentiator, even in the age of AI
Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction
01:20 – From a family computer to a hacker mindset
04:00 – First paid gig: penetration testing for hardware
05:30 – Building Portugal's first incident response team at university
09:00 – Selling trust, not fear: early media and awareness work
11:00 – Scaling to 22 countries and finding the right investors
15:30 – The acquisition: joining a global security group
20:00 – Growing into CTO and leaving on his own terms
22:00 – The idea behind Art Resilia and reading the market shift
24:30 – The name: "The Art of Resilience"
25:00 – Where Art Resilia stands today: 50 people, 4 countries
27:00 – Why the Netherlands and Benelux?
28:00 – Lessons from 20 years of building: focus, people, pragmatism
33:00 – Culture, remote work, and hiring for values first
40:00 – What's next for Art Resilia in 3–5 years
43:00 – AI in cybersecurity: tool or transformation?
45:30 – Advice for young professionals entering the field
52:00 – Final message to CISOs: protect both business confidentiality and individual privacy
Connect with the guest:
Francisco Nina Rente: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frente/
Website: https://www.artresilia.com
Follow Cyber Security District:
Laurens Jagt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurensjagt/
Website: https://www.cybersecuritydistrict.com/
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