TSC Value

Trusted Advisors™

• Why We're Different
• Trusted Advisors™
• Subject Matter Experts
• TSC Knowledge Base
• Publications
• Industry Standards
• Conference Presentations

In the world of IT security, consulting is what other disciplines call contracting. That's why, here at The Security Consortium™ (TSC), we offer Trusted Advisors™ to give advice at an executive level and leadership in execution for complex technology activities. Every TSC engagement is led and supervised by one of the following Trusted Advisors.

Francisco Artes

Francisco is a leading regional and national security expert and recognized InfoSec top executive. He has a distinguished 15-year background; implementing and securing one of the largest and most widely known networks in the world. As Information Security Manager for Electronic Arts, Francisco was responsible for all information security solutions and policies to protect the intellectual property, e-commerce and on-line gaming networks for this $3.400 Billion, Fortune 100 organization.

Francisco is an expert on penetration testing, incident response, computer forensics, security architecture and design and encryption. In addition to being responsible for all world-wide security, auditing and change management for a secure infrastructure, is the liaison with a number of government agencies, ISP’s and other entities for the course of all internal and external security investigations. He has written several white papers and is an instructor on hacking and forensic security reviews for the FBI, in the field and at the FBI training facilities in Quantico, VA. Francisco has been the special guest of the Texas State Attorney General symposiums on Cybercrime, a speaker and subject matter expert on Anti Piracy for the United States Attorney General and he has been a panel member for the Critical Information Security Conference held by the Texas State Attorney General and the United States Attorney General.

He is a CISSP and a CNE.

Geoffrey Strongin

Geoffrey Strongin was most recently an AMD Fellow and served as AMD’s Chief Platform Security Architect. In this role he contributed to the definition of security features that were incorporated into AMD’s processors and supporting platforms. Geoffrey was also a founding board member of the Trusted Computing Group which is dedicated to bringing trustworthy computing to the endpoint.

An award winning designer and inventor with over 60 patents, Geoffrey’s outside interests include serving as co-chair of the OASIS XDI Technical Committee and being a Member of the Board of Trustees of XDI.ORG, a non-profit public-trust organization responsible for overseeing and administering XDI-based global services.

Michelle R. Koblas

Michelle Koblas has over 25 years experience leading IT and Information Security functions, including product and architectural review; policy development and contract negotiations;  awareness and training; and design and audit of security and operational controls –  in support of PCI, HIPAA, ISO27001, and SOX compliance, as well as operational network management and design. Michelle possesses strong business acumen, excellent communication skills, and excels at cross-team collaboration, bringing a business perspective to technical and security problems, aiding communication between technical and non-technical audiences. She has led Information Security teams for eBay and Cisco, for many years supporting and managing Cisco’s internal network and Internet connectivity. Prior to that, she was a research scientist for NORUT Information Technology, focused on network protocol research for one of the first video conferencing applications to support telemedicine. She was also responsible for deployment of the NASA Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation facility's first Gigabit network.

Michelle has her CISSP certification and received an M.S. degree in Computer and Information Science from the University of Oregon in Eugene and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland, Washington. Her publications include documentation on SOCKS and real-time network protocols. Michelle has been a speaker at technical conferences worldwide and is currently a member of ISSA, (ISC)2, IEEE, WITI, and the Executive Women’s Forum (EWF).

Dan Corcoran

Dan is an experienced problem solver who has developed innovative technology solutions for demanding business requirements for some of the world's largest and most sophisticated enterprises. He has held a variety of senior management positions in operations, customer service, engineering, architecture, policy development, strategic planning, risk management and FFIEC compliance. Dan has worked in a wide range of industries including the military, telecommunications, automotive, systems integration, security, entertainment and financial services. He has broad and diversified experience with a wide range of information technology including Telephony Network Design and Engineering, Communications Security, Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Directory Services, Certification Authorities, Software Development, Information Security, Personnel Security, Physical Security, Fraud Detection and Incident Response.

Dan has a Bachelor's of Fine Arts (BFA) degree with a concentration in Computer Science from the University of New Mexico and a graduate certificate in Instructional Technology from Florida State University. He is the author of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) E-Banking Policy, and A User's Guide to X.509 Version 3 Digital Certificates.

Andy Cottrell

Andy has over 21 years of experience in development management and product strategy. As the CTO at TriCipher, a vendor of strong authentication credentials and the systems that use them, he has worked with many large financial services, healthcare and pharmaceutical companies working on access security, identity management and digital signing projects. At Phoenix Technologies, where he was Senior Director for Security Products Development, he set direction and strategy for all security products and infrastructure, defining the architecture and product roadmap and leading the development efforts. He has participated in the development of several industry standards including the Trusted Computing Group.

Before joining Phoenix Technologies, Andy was the Head of the Engineering Department at Uxbridge College, England. Andy has a Bachelor's degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Birmingham University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Information Engineering from City University, both in the UK.

Dr Steven Hessel

Steven R. Hessel brings strengths in radio frequency communications, computer networking and system performance to The Security Consortium's wireless networking efforts. For the last five years he has been a consultant specializing in wireless data systems. He has been an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University teaching wireless networking, and has developed highly accurate measurement equipment for wireless networks.

Previously, Dr. Hessel designed microwave integrated circuits for Agilent Technologies. Before the Agilent Hewlett-Packard (HP) split, he designed radio frequency (RF) test instrumentation for Hewlett-Packard. He was a member of HP's System Performance Laboratory specializing in multi-processor performance, and as a result of performance needs that he demonstrated; he architect ed and initiated the design of the memory system that allowed HP to enter the data mining market. He was a member of the technical staff at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories for seven years where he developed low-level protocols suitable for high-speed data communication. Much fiber-optic communication today uses his work. He also modeled heterogeneous data communications network performance and traffic. He holds three patents (with more coming.) He holds a B.S. and M.S. from Brigham Young University in Electrical Engineering with an RF communication emphasis and a Doctorate from Stanford University in Electrical Engineering specializing in Data Communication Networking.

Mark Kadrich

For the past 20 years, Mark has worked in the security community, building knowledge, and contributing solutions. His strengths are in systems level design, policy generation, end point security, and risk management.

Kadrich is a CISSP, holds a BS Management Information Systems, University of Phoenix and degrees in Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering, Memphis, 1979. He is a contributing author in publications such as TCP Unleashed (Sams ISBN-13: 978-0672316906), ISSA Journal, Publish Magazine, Planet IT, RSA, CSI, and The Black Hat Briefings. His own book End Point Security (ISBN 0-321-43695-4 Addison Wesley) was published in 2007. Mark Kadrich is a well-known speaker and evangelist on network security matters at technical conference and events.

Richard Lindberg

Richard's specialization is in Information Assurance and Security Architecture. This means gathering and validating business requirements from a technical environment for a project, performing in-depth vulnerability assessments and audits, designing a solution with direct traceability to the requirements, building an operational prototype if necessary, working with QA and change control for authorization to implement, and creating documentation with enough clarity for non-technical field personnel to execute a system build.

He is the organizer of Security Opus - The San Francisco Bay Area's annual advanced information security forum for the CISO and security professionals.