Cosaint is a privately-held company incorporated in Washington state in 2001, and headquartered in Mount Vernon, WA. The company develops information security education solutions with a focus on online security awareness training for end-users.
"Cosaint" is a Gaelic word meaning "to protect" or "defend". This reflects not only the background of many of our staff in the information and computer security industry, but also our dedication as a company to producing secure, reliable and robust solutions for our clients.
Clients
Some of Cosaint’s clients include:
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People
Matthew Gischer
Chief Executive Officer
Matt has been helping businesses design, manage, and secure their IT infrastructures for well over 10 years. He has worked with a variety of organizations – both large and small – on complex projects involving network security, infrastructure virtualization, and wireless networking.
Prior to co-founding Cosaint, Matt worked at SecurityPortal – a major center for security research and information. At its peak, SecurityPortal had an audience of over 350,000 IS, IT, and security professionals, hosted over 40,000 pages of information and was receiving over 2,000,000 page views per month. At SecurityPortal, Matt wrote the Microsoft security newsletter sent out to thousands of security professionals each week. He also led the development of the NetRadar alerting system, and supported the development of other online services.
As well as his leadership and management role at Cosaint, Matt is ultimately responsible for the architecture and design of the delivery infrastructure which allows Cosaint to deliver online training to tens of thousands of students. He also leads the professional services division for a local company – Network Solutions NW, Inc. – and he holds numerous IT certifications including CCIE Security, CCSP, CCNP, MCSE and VCP.
Michael McCrea
Chief Operating Officer
Michael has over twenty years of system integration, network security, on-line hosting and project management experience. He has worked in the fields of information security and network integration since 1990. Before joining Cosaint, Mike worked as the Director of Technical Operations for SecurityPortal where his responsibilities included management of the SecurityPortal web site and infrastructure – a major center for security research and information. Michael also managed the development team of network engineers and programmers, and a content development team including both in-house and contract authors and editors. He was also in charge of the early development of the NetRadar alerting system and authored the SecurityPortal newsletter which had over 20,000 subscribers.
At Cosaint, Michael is active in the development of on-line training content including authoring Cosaint’s “Safe Surfing”, “Good Password Practice” and “Dealing with Spyware” courses. He also acts as a subject matter expert and technical reviewer for all Cosaint courses. As well as his course development role, Michael is also engaged in network design and implementation consulting to a wide range of clients (including businesses and healthcare organizations) in Skagit, Snohomish and King counties.
Michael has worked with a wide variety of methodologies and manufacturers’ equipment. He also has a strong working knowledge of web hosting, virtual environments, IDS, VPN’s, Active Security, intra/internet, LAN/WAN, TCP/IP, routing fundamentals. Michael is a MCSE, CNE, CCNA and has an ATA degree from Skagit Valley College of Mount Vernon, Washington.
Steve Addison
Vice President, Business Development
Steve has over 20 years of project management, development, marketing and operations management experience in engineering, software and e-learning companies. He started his career as a project manager with British Aerospace in Stevenage, UK working on the development of guided missile systems. After studying for his doctorate, he returned to industry as an engineering design consultant with Frazer-Nash Consultancy before joining Flomerics, a CAE software vendor. As Manager Western Region and later CIO and Director of Marketing at Flomerics, Steve was based in San Jose CA and Boston MA where – amongst his other duties – he managed the customer training program, and developed the company’s internet strategy including public and intranet web sites, and SaaS tools for mechanical engineers.
In 1999, Steve left Flomerics and joined Knowledge Impact – an e-learning company specializing in custom learning and change management solutions for CRM/ERP implementations – as a Practice Director and then Vice President of Consulting Services. In 2000, Steve joined SecurityPortal to lead their product development programs including the development of Information Security University (web-based training for security professionals), SecuriStat (an online security benchmarking application) and a security knowledge center. He co-founded Cosaint in 2001 and has been active in product development and consulting as well as leading the company’s business development efforts.
Steve has a MA and PhD in Engineering from King’s College, Cambridge. He was a member of the teaching faculty at City University where he taught and developed curriculum for both the classroom and distance learning programs within the Computer Science program. He has also taught Technical Communications and Operations Management for Henry Cogswell College in Everett, WA. He is currently active in the development of new curricula for Lake Washington Institute of Technology.
He has authored classroom and WBT courses on topics as diverse as information security, privacy, intellectual property law, mechanical engineering, operations management, technical communications and computer programming. Steve is also an active blogger on the Security Awareness Training blog, and teaches a workshop on “Building a Practical Security Awareness Training Program” which has been presented in locations across the US including Seattle, Portland and Salem (OR), Anchorage and Washington, DC to organizations including Alaska Air, Nordstrom, State of Washington, State of Oregon, King County, Frontier Bank, T-Mobile, Department of Veterans Affairs, DHHS, Safeco, Nautilus, and the City of Portland.