Thomas Duryea Logicalis has appointed Gavin Coulthard to head its recently established national security practice.

Coulthard, whose 24 years in IT include roles as product sales specialist for Citrix and ANZ engineering manager for Palo Alto Networks, takes on the role of national security practice manager, and is responsible for leading the practice and growing its team of cyber security experts.

Michael Chanter, Thomas Dureya Logicalis chief executive officer, says the security practice – one of four key practices formed in the company's recent restructure – is ‘fundamental' to the IT solutions and managed service provider's future business.

“Security is an essential component of the digital transformation journey and Gavin's experience in the IT security industry, coupled with his team leadership skills, perfectly positions him to lead this strategic practice,” Chanter says.

The appointment comes as the company gears up to launch its new purpose-built office later this week, to accommodate an ‘activity based working model', with the company saying the move is the final piece in the integration between Thomas Duryea and Logicalis, bringing the Melbounre teams together under one roof.

Coulthard says “IT security is an essential space to be involved in at this point in time.

“The combination of new and emerging threats and the fundamental changes in data center architecture presents a myriad of challenges to address as organisations are finding their way into cloud-hosted services.

Coulthard's time at Palo Alto Networks saw him responsible for building the engineering skill sets and pre-sales engineering team across Australia and New Zealand, while his stint at Citrix saw him helping customers with SD-WAN requirements by improving WAN performance and enhancing security.

He also spent eight years with F5 Networks, focusing on Layer 4-7 network traffic management and security solutions, and has worked in security and solution architecture roles at IBM, PwC Consulting and KPMG.