The Barefoot Beginning: How Founder Iain Wadds Found a More Human Way into Cybersecurity

Long before Barefoot Cyber became a well recognised name in the cybersecurity world, it was simply an idea sitting with one person, Iain Wadds, a security engineer who felt increasingly disconnected from the work he was doing. His career began in deeply technical roles, the kind where you pull systems apart just to understand how they work. But over time, corporate life nudged him into pre-sales: half technical, half commercial, and never fully satisfying.

On paper, it was a natural progression. In reality, it felt like a slow drift away from what mattered.

Iain found himself in environments where the pressure to hit sales targets outweighed the responsibility to give thoughtful guidance. He saw customers being told that a single piece of software could make all their security challenges disappear. “Just buy this, it’ll fix everything.” But he knew it wouldn’t. He could see it in their systems, in their processes, in the untouched alerts quietly stacking up. The tools weren’t the problem. The problem was that no one was looking at them.

Security had become less about protecting people and more about selling to them. And that didn’t sit well with him.

This frustration built slowly over years, in the UK, and later in South Africa, where he and his wife relocated to escape the grey skies and be closer to her family. What was meant to be a temporary move turned into more than fifteen years of building a life, raising children, and finding community.

And somewhere in the middle of that, a thought took root: There must be a better, more honest way to help people stay secure.

Starting Something of His Own: Barefoot Cyber

By 2017, Iain reached a quiet turning point. He didn’t want to keep working in environments where selling came before solving. He wanted to give advice that was genuinely useful, grounded, clear, and free from the pressure to push another product. So he left corporate life and started consulting on his own.

There was no grand business plan, no funded launch, no perfectly polished brand vision. There was just Iain, his experience, a laptop, and a garden table that became his office. The name “Barefoot Cyber” came from those relaxed early moments, working outside, often in flip-flops, thinking about how to strip security back to basics. It felt right: simple, human, grounded.

What he offered was equally simple: practical guidance built from years of seeing what did and didn’t work inside organisations. And slowly, quietly, the work grew.

Finding the Right People at the Right Time

As demand picked up, so did the workload. By 2018, it became clear that Iain needed someone with him. Not just to help, but to share in the belief that cybersecurity didn’t have to be complicated to be effective.

That person was Charl. The two of them spent the next few years building the foundations of the business, navigating client work, refining their approach, and weathering the uncertainty.

A Slow, Steady Growth

By 2020, the business had naturally evolved. Clients weren’t just asking for advice anymore; they needed ongoing managed support, someone to look at the alerts, manage the noise, and give security the day-to-day attention it required.

This shift led to the next hire: Fanus, who joined as an analyst and eventually became the Security Operations Centre Manager. His journey mirrored the culture Iain wanted to build: a place where people feel grounded, supported, and able to grow.

Over the years, the team expanded one person at a time. No rush. No pressure to scale aggressively. Just thoughtful decisions about who would fit, who could learn, and who truly cared about the work.

What emerged was something uncommon in the cybersecurity industry: a team that stayed.

Most people who joined remained part of the business. And as Barefoot Cyber matured, Iain built an internship programme, a one-year learning experience for young people stepping into cybersecurity for the first time. Many of them stayed on as full-time team members. Watching people grow, find their confidence, and start shaping the future of the company became one of the most meaningful parts of Iain’s journey.

A Founder Who Never Planned to Be “A Founder”

What makes Iain’s story unusual is how quietly it unfolded. There was no dramatic leap, no moment of “I’m going to build an empire.” It was simply a steady, thoughtful response to a problem he couldn’t ignore. He didn’t set out to build a company.He set out to do good work.And a company formed around that intention.

Barefoot Cyber grew because people trusted him, first as an individual, then as the leader of a team. The growth wasn’t forced; it was earned slowly, consistently, and with the same grounded approach that inspired the name.

Today, Barefoot Cyber exists because one person decided that cybersecurity could be better: more human, more honest, more connected to the people it serves. And while the business has grown, the heart of it is still the same: a founder who values clarity over complexity, people over products, and purpose over pressure.