About Charles J. Kolodgy

 Charles J. Kolodgy is the Principal at Security Mindsets. He is a security strategist, visionary, forecaster, historian, and advisor who has been involved in the cyber security field for over 30 years. His views and understanding of cyber security were shaped during his years at the National Security Agency. During that time he held a variety of analyst and managerial positions within both the information assurance and operations directorates. Following NSA is was a a research vice president covering security markets for IDC and then a security strategist for IBM Security.

 In those positions he executed primary research projects, forecast security markets including many custom forecasts for emerging markets, identified market trends, and communicated that information to a wide audience. He authored numerous documents to explain market realities and vendor positioning within those markets. Charles has been a speaker at many security conferences and events, including the RSA Conference, CIO Conference, CEIG, IANS events, has given dozens of webcasts, and has spoken at other events. He can communicate in business or technical terms, depending on the audience and is just as comfortable speaking in an executive boardroom as in a conference auditorium.. He has been widely quoted in the press.

 He has demonstrated thought leadership by introducing ideas and concepts that are now commonplace. Examples are he was one of the first to predict that the criminal element would become the primary threat to information technology, was one of the first to forecast the SIEM market, wrote one of the first comprehensive market analyst reports on software security, highlighted the need to consider the human element as a security resource, and did an extensive study on Quantum Encryption in 2004. However he is best known for naming and defining the Unified Threat Management (UTM) market which continues to be one of the strongest cyber security markets with vendor revenue of $3 billion per year. An investor for a leading UTM vendor credited the company's successful IPO to the identification of this market.

 He is an InfraGard member, a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers and is on the Advisory Board for the National Cyber Security Hall of Fame. Charles holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and an M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University.