Chris Maritz, IT Security Manager celebrates his Digi anniversary.
What brought you to Digi 20 years ago?
As a fresh high school graduate, I decided that a career in the technology space was right up my alley, and I pursued a bundle of certificates at the height of the technology surge during the year 2000. I’ve always liked working with computers and fondly remember putting together haphazard networks and connecting to bulletin board systems over dialup networks.
My first adventures into enterprise IT was an opportunity to job-shadow an IT Technician working for the City of Cape Town. The company that I was job-shadowing with offered me a position in their Call Center, where I worked for MacAfee helping people remove viruses from their computers.
After becoming a team leader, a friend told me of a company based in sea point called ForwardSlash (which later became DigiOutsource) that offered competitive salaries and free lunch 😊
Tell us about your Digi journey.
After a successful application for a call center position, I started working for ForwardSlash in January 2002. I still remember to this day where I sat when I took my first real player call over the phone and the emotions that went with that! It was all very energetic and exciting, and I have many fond memories of the people that I worked with during those years.
After working in the Call Center, a position opened within the service desk for a Helpdesk monitoring agent, monitoring the business system after hours. In true DigiOutsource fashion, the opportunities for growth continued and I moved from the 24/7 Helpdesk staff onto the day shift staff and eventually I got an opportunity to join the Infrastructure team as a System Administrator where I spent the bulk of my career at DigiOutsource – Learning, building, and maintaining the infrastructure. I have some amazing memories from that time, such as the building move to the new DigiOutsource campus and a joke that I can never forget. What do you call a 3-legged donkey? A wonkey. Whoever wrote that on a whiteboard in a meeting room, you made many a tired person’s day!
In the summer of 2017, I moved over to the IT security team as a Security Networks Engineer and my adventures in IT Security began! It has been an amazing journey of learning and working with other amazing technology teams that understand the importance of IT security. It would be impossible not to admit that we had a few scary late nights and weekends but under the expert leadership of Wayne Webner, the IT Security Manager at the time, we always came out on top. DigiOutsource gave us incredible opportunities to learn and grow. I remember the incredible spectacle of the first Blackhat conference that we attended and the number of things that we learned from that. I also feel bad for the poor hotel IT guys that had to fix the bill changers that were hacked in the hotel lobby. Attending talks with some of the industry leaders in security really is a highlight and a great eye opener.
In 2020 I got my first opportunity to join a leadership role within Digioutsource as the IT Security Specialist team lead. It was made easy by working for some very talented and driven people and after about a year and a half I got the thumbs up to become the IT Security Manager. It’s been lots of hard work and learning while always being supported by great opportunities and teamwork.
Tell us why, 20 years later, you are still working at Digi.
Over the years DigiOutsource has shown how dedicated they are to their staff and have continued to give opportunities for growth and development. I am happy to call myself part of the Digi Family. Digi had invested in my future, and I have seen the company grow from strength to strength by investing in their staff and their well-being. Be it from healthy meals at the canteen or gym membership to keep the Friday drinks at bay. Here is to another 20 years! Cheers!
