David Taylor’s world came crashing down when he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, forcing him to leave his 10-year military career behind.
The former Royal Navy submariner has since set up Manchester-based cybersecurity start-up Aruga Cyber, helping businesses to detect and respond to cyber threats faster through AI-powered automation.
But it wasn’t quite where he first expected life to take him when he received his diabetes diagnosis.
“It was a shock, because it came out of the blue. I knew my time in the military was done because you can’t be going on a nuclear submarine, hiding away somewhere with someone with diabetes, he tells Prolific North.
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“If anything goes wrong they’ll need to get off, which means breaking radio silence with the enemy or whoever, and them knowing where you are. So, mission over.”
It was the career he’d always dreamed about. From the age of just 15, he was making countless after school trips to the careers office with a dogged determination to break into the military, before eventually landing a role in the Royal Navy’s submarine service.
There, he spent more than a decade building a specialism in communications and managing everything from satellites, radios and IT systems onboard nuclear submarines.
“I was only halfway through my career in the military as you normally plan on doing a minimum of four years but you can do over 22 and 22 is the full pension cut off. I had no real plans to leave, I was still young and in my 20s so it was a blow. I had no idea what I was going to do.”
Exploring other career paths, he applied for countless jobs. But despite more than 10 years working on nuclear submarines, finding a role in ‘civilian life’ proved far harder than he expected.
“I don’t know if it was just the time back then, but I must have gone easily for eight to 10 job interviews. Every single one said: ‘We absolutely love you, your career, and you’ve got military experience – but no civilian enterprise experience’.
“That to me, was just the craziest thing. I thought: ‘Surely it is easier in civilian life, than what I’ve been doing?”
After taking what he describes as a “massive” pay cut to work at a networking company, he threw himself into retraining, spending his spare time completing courses and teaching himself new skills on the job.
“I worked my way up, went through different jobs and different industries from networking, management, all that kind of stuff. Then I got to the point where I was head of IT for a construction company and a small team with me. I just wasn’t satisfied,” he explains.
Realising he had become a “jack of all trades, master of none”, he shifted his focus to cybersecurity instead, going on even more courses and getting more industry certifications.
Over the next six years, he helped build internal security operation centres (SOC) to detect and respond to cybersecurity threats for private companies, service providers, and local government.
But the deeper he got into the industry, the more frustrated he became.
The driving force behind Aruga Cyber
“I’m a driven person and it got to the point where I started thinking: ‘Surely there’s a better way of doing this’. I kept thinking about how we can improve security operations, improve service delivery and better protect businesses,” he says.
That frustration came from what he saw in the Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) market, a model he says is typically stuck in the past with slow processes, rising costs and an inconsistent customer experience. Not exactly ideal when businesses are now dealing with a growing number of cyber threats.
“It’s all being delivered in the same way. Everything was ticket based and it just wasn’t fast enough. If things were being found in a network, nothing was really being done about it.
“The customer’s getting a terrible level of service, but they don’t even know because they’re not the specialist, which is why a provider has been brought in in the first place.”
It’s what sparked the idea behind Aruga Cyber in 2024, with Taylor setting out on a mission to transform the traditional MSSP model to make security operations faster, safer, and more efficient.
And he can remember the exact moment the idea finally clicked into place.
“I remember sitting at this desk, which is in my son’s bedroom upstairs, and it was late at night — around 7pm. I could hear my kids downstairs but I hadn’t seen them because I’d been working all day.
“I just thought: ‘Why am I sat here working all these hours on a set salary to get all my ideas over the line, but for another business?’
“I just had this epiphany, I suppose, to go and do it for myself.”
Knowing he couldn’t build the business alone, he called on friend and fellow military veteran Daniel Long to join him as co-founder.
And unlike the experiences of most start-up founders, Taylor says fundraising came together surprisingly quickly.
“We just had the idea, and I was telling people in my network about it. Through that, they were telling people who they knew about it, leading to two investors that were ready to go with us.
“But then I found an accountant, as I had no idea how to run a business, and told him the idea. He thought it was great and told me his last client had a managed SOC company that he’d just sold and would put me in touch with him.
“So we had a call, he also thought it was a brilliant idea, and wanted to invest. That’s where we started!”
How it works
Taylor describes Aruga Cyber as a managed cybersecurity service provider specialising in security operations.
“Our ultimate aim is to stop businesses from getting hacked, getting breached, keeping the bad guys out, and keeping the users, the customers, and all of their data safe,” he explains.
The company’s AI-powered automation technology delivers cyber defence support “within 60 seconds”, while Taylor claims many traditional providers can take anywhere from an hour to several days because investigations are still handled manually.
Rather than relying on traditional ticketing systems and delayed monthly security reporting, Aruga Cyber has instead rebuilt how the service is delivered.
Instead of raising tickets, customers can speak directly with the team through Microsoft Teams in real time.
“We wanted to remove the ticket systems, which we’ve done, and then we wanted to remove the reports, which we’ve done.
“So all of our reporting is done in real time. We’ve built our own portal and app where the customer can log in and see absolutely everything that’s happening.
“Some people said: ‘You’re an absolute lunatic for even thinking about doing this, because the customers are just going to be messaging you all the time. You won’t be able to track stuff’ and things like that. But it’s been the complete opposite.”
He says this is due to customers feeling “safe and secure” that someone is always on hand to respond quickly to potential cyber threats.
“Because we’re smaller, more agile, and because we’ve got real world experience, we’re able to build faster, more efficiently and provide a better service than any big company ever could.”
The mission isn’t over
With a team of six, the business is headquartered at the Greater Manchester Digital Security Hub (DiSH) and has already expanded with a second office in Luton.
Reflecting on how far he’s come since those early days of job rejection after leaving the military, he’s now on a more personal mission to help other veterans transition into cyber and IT careers.
“I still do a lot of mentorship with people in the military, with people who want to get out and into cyber or IT jobs. I help them with things like where they should spend their money to upskill, figure out the courses they should be doing, and help them with things like CVs or interview prep.
“A few guys I’ve worked with over the last three years have really good jobs now. They’ve worked their way up in the industry.
“Aruga is a veteran-founded business, with my background and my business partner being ex-military. We want to start doing that properly – getting people into cyber from graduates to underrepresented groups.
“We do that already. But we really want to do that for veterans as well. In my opinion, even if you follow our story as veterans, they’re the best people you can hire because you can pretty much guarantee that stuff’s going to get done.”
Despite not going to university himself, Taylor has now been invited to teach students about security operations at the University of Warwick later this year.
“It’s only going to be busy for a few months. It’s great for Aruga, but I can teach those students exactly what it’s like in the real world. From experience, from a military background, but also because Warwick is number one for cyber.
“If we’re hiring at any point, I get the first pick of all the students who are performing best, who will be a great fit for us. So it’s win-win.”
As for the future of the business, Taylor says the focus remains firmly on growth but without losing sight of what Aruga Cyber set out to do in the first place.
“We’ve always said from day one: we’re just going to stay in our lane. We only want to do security operations, and we just want to be very good at what we do.
“I think if you go out and you start offering too many services and things like that, it just waters down your credibility.
“We’re good at security operations and that’s really all we want to do.”
