Founders

Ray Bernard

Ray Bernard is a security consultant and author who has provided pivotal direction and advice in the security industry and the security profession for over 24 years.

Ray is President and Principal Consultant of Ray Bernard Consulting Services (www.go-rbcs.com), a group of highly expert corporate, physical and IT security consultants with outstanding track records in their fields of expertise. Ray has led many noteworthy security projects for international airports, nuclear disarmament facilities, sports stadiums, water districts, manufacturing plants and multiple-tower high-rise facilities. He is also the Convergence Editor for Security Technology Executive magazine (formerly Security Technology & Design), for which he writes the monthly "Convergence Q&A" column as well as a highly-regarded series of articles about the Convergence of Physical Security and IT.

Ray was named one of security's Top 10 Movers and Shakers of 2006 by Security Technology & Design magazine.

Ray is a Physical Security Professional (PSP) , a designation awarded by ASIS International, of which Ray is an active member. Ray sits on the educational committees both the Physical Security Council and the IT Security Council. Ray is also Board-certified in Homeland Security (CHS-III) by the American Board for Certification in Homeland Security of the American College of Forensic Examiners Institute (ACFEI).

Ray is a contributing author to the Encyclopedia of Security Management, Second Edition (2007), covering the topics "The Convergence of Physical Security and IT", "Access Control Levels", and "Authentication, Authorization and Cryptography."

James Connor

James Connor is a Principal of N2N Secure (www.n2nsecure.com), a security consulting firm specializing in converged Physical and Logical security solutions. James is the former Senior Manager – Global Security Systems, Symantec Corporation.

James's active involvement in security industry convergence initiatives and security profession thought leadership, and his determination to lead by example, have brought him recognition as a security visionary. James was named one of security's Top 10 Movers and Shakers of 2006 by Security Technology & Design magazine.

His more than 19-year history in security includes stints at Simplex (now SimplexGrinnell, a Tyco company) and PeopleSoft (a division of Oracle). James has always promoted a converged physical and IT security management approach to provide a comprehensive view of global operations. At Symantec, James was responsible for the design and implementation of global strategies for technical security systems at Symantec.

Realizing that all facility-based physical security systems, devices and services operated in silos, he initiated a program at Symantec to coordinate information maintained across the company's many departments and projects, including human resources, IT directories, building access, disaster recovery, smart cards, background checks and visitor management, under a single policy framework. This program not only increased security and information management, it saved in total cost.

James does not keep his ideas or experiences bottled up; he uses them to help advance the security industry and the security profession at large. He has spoken on convergence and global security strategies at several industry meetings, presenting before such organizations as the ISACA Silicon Valley Chapter and the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of ASIS.

Rodney Thayer

Rodney Thayer is a premier computer security researcher at RSG Model Works (rsgmodelworks.com), focused on network attack and defense issues as they relate to business infrastructure. Current security research (exploit development) includes product and infrastructure evaluations, and training/lecturing on computer security topics.

Rodney's background is in engineering, deployment, and evaluation of computer and network security solutions. He has experience in implementing a variety of network protocols and solutions including early IPSec (IP security) and SSL systems.

He was a member of the Working Group responsible for delivering the first standard specification of the IPsec protocol. Rodney was also involved in developing several IETF specifications including RFC 2411 (IPsec), RFC 2440 (PGP), in addition to involvment in work on TLS (web browser/SSL security) and Digital Certificates (X.509/PKI.)

He has an engineering background on a variety of platforms from small embedded systems through server-class mainframes. Rodney was also involved in creating the VPN Vendor Consortium and has extensive experience in the VPN marketplace.

Rodney has extensive experience working to standardize network security protocols and practices through organizations such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF.) Rodney has written product reviews for trade publications, taught at venues like RSA and Black Hat. He has played Capture The Flag at Defcon (on a winning team), and has consulted for large and small enterprises and Infrastructure Operators.