margaret dibor, ai tech, web summit, vancouver, bc, helen siwak, portfolioyvr, west coast entrepreneur, yvr

Margaret Dibor: Dima Risk Solutions: Building the Right Foundation

Margaret Dibor arrived at Web Summit Vancouver 2026 with a new build, a sharper product, and a philosophy refined by a year of hard-won development. When Portfolio.YVR spotlighted her in the 2025 Special Edition, she was advancing a bold premise: a virtual CISO and privacy officer, accessible to the small and medium businesses that needed it most but had never had access to that level of expertise. The platform has since evolved from Chatawork — accepted into the Web Summit Alpha programme in 2025 — into Dima Risk Solutions, a name that reflects full ownership of both the company and its direction. What the year of building revealed was not a flaw in the original vision, but a more honest understanding of where small businesses actually stand. “Small businesses do not need another compliance checklist. They need to understand risk in business language, financial exposure, prioritised actions, clear rationale,” Dibor explains. That insight has since shaped everything.

SIMPLICITY AS STRATEGY

The virtual CISO concept assumed a level of security maturity that many SMBs simply do not possess. Early users were not arriving with sophisticated questions. They were arriving with uncertainty about where to begin, anxiety about liability, and frustration with tools designed for enterprise teams. The response was to rebuild around a cleaner, more practical core — one with the architecture to expand into the broader vision as clients grow into it. “That is not a retreat. It is the right foundation. You cannot skip steps with this audience, and the year of development made that undeniable,” she adds.

margaret dibor, ai tech, web summit, vancouver, bc, helen siwak, portfolioyvr, west coast entrepreneur, yvr

PARTNERSHIPS WITH PURPOSE

The past year of outreach has produced something Dibor values over headline figures: a small, committed team and relationships grounded in shared purpose. A formal partnership with Cornerstone College and an active collaboration with a second university provide structured feedback, real-world testing conditions, and credibility with the institutional market. She continues to work with Etuteki on specific engagements, but Dima Risk Solutions remains her primary focus and her own product. The pipeline reflects exactly what she set out to build: “relationships grounded in shared purpose, not transactional agreements,” she notes.

THE URGENCY SHIFT

The risk conversations Dibor is having with SMB clients have undergone a fundamental change. A year ago, she was explaining why AI-enabled social engineering was a growing concern. Today, clients are arriving with incidents. The velocity of threat has outpaced most small businesses’ awareness, let alone their defences. The question has shifted from whether to act, to how to act without paralyzing operations or budgets — precisely the conversation Dima Risk Solutions was built to have.

TRUST AS CURRENCY

Building a business in Canada as an international founder has reshaped how Dibor works. Unlike her years in London, where professional reputation was built within established organisational structures, entering the Canadian market meant constructing credibility from the ground up. Her involvement with ISACA Vancouver, the South Surrey Chamber, and speaking engagements are not marketing activities in her view — they are demonstrations of long-term commitment. The clearest evidence that the mindset shift toward security is taking hold, she observes, is not a metric. “It is the nature of the conversations I am now having. A year ago I was explaining why cybersecurity mattered to SMB owners. Today they are coming to me with specific concerns, asking better questions, and looking for frameworks they can actually use,” Dibor shares.

In the year since Web Summit 2025, Margaret has replatformed her product, secured academic partnerships, grown a committed team, and established herself as a trusted voice in the Canadian cybersecurity market. That momentum is finding a new outlet on June 20, 2026, when she launches her own security awareness masterclass — a programme designed specifically to help business owners and their teams understand risk in practical, non-technical terms. When awareness stops being passive and people begin seeking tools rather than warnings, the culture, she believes, is beginning to change.

Author Profile

Helen Siwak, Collaborator: This story is created in collaboration between Helen Siwak and the featured subject. As the founder and publisher of Portfolio.YVR Business & Entrepreneurs Magazine, Helen works closely with entrepreneurs to share their paths of innovation, resilience, and growth. Each story in this series is co-developed through interviews and first-person insights, blending authentic voices with Helen’s editorial expertise to highlight the remarkable individuals shaping British Columbia’s business landscape.