John Connors –  President

John Connors is a recognized expert in multiple cybersecurity disciplines. With over 40 years of experience, he has guided many Vanguard clients through enterprise security challenges; including integration of z/OS Security Server and other enterprise security systems, while assisting in the development of new Vanguard products and solutions.

Prior to joining Vanguard, John proudly served in the United States Air Force for over 24 years, where he grew from a Secure Communication Specialist to Superintendent of Network Operations. After a long, successful career with the military, he finally retired as Chief of Special Projects, responsible for managing a large scale command and control communication facility.

John’s commercial background roles include the CTO at VMDirect, Operations Manager and Chief Architect for a large ASP, and Senior Systems Engineer for a major computer integrator.

John joined Vanguard´s Professional Services Team in April 2002, as a Senior Professional Services Consultant; going on to serve as IT Director, Director of Operations, Vice-President of Technology, before assuming the role of President.

Eldon Worley – Senior Product Architect of Vanguard Enforcer

Eldon is a member of the Mainframe Executive Hall of Fame. He is responsible for directing the Vanguard Enforcer product development and architecture. Eldon directed the Vanguard Enforcer product alterations necessary to achieve the EAL3+ evaluation.

Eldon was previously at the Almaden IBM Research Laboratory where he was involved in the original development of the RACF product and then following in further development of RACF, including several releases of the product. During this time, Eldon spent two temporary assignments in England, one at IBM Hursley and the second at Cambridge University still involved with RACF and its future. Eldon was also a member of the IBM Security Architecture Board.

Eldon contributed to the RACF releases that contained the original release code, password enhancements, global access, RACF address space, and the RACF Remote Sharing enhancement. In addition to these enhancements, while at IBM, Eldon was continually involved with the RACF product review process of the various RACF releases and enhancements including the Generic profiles and B1 Security enhancements.

Brian Marshall –  Chief Strategist

Marshall joined Vanguard in 2006 serving initially as the director of research and development. During this time Marshall was the primary architect and visionary behind Vanguard Configuration Manager, which is the only automated baseline configuration scanner that enables government agencies and contractors to test and assess their compliance with the National Checklist Program (NCP) guidelines, of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), for IBM z/OS and RACF.

Prior to joining Vanguard, Marshall served 11 years in software development management at Computer Associates and Innovative DP Designs, Inc., where he led the development of IMS database utilities. He was also a professor of computer science at Solano College in Fairfield, California.

Marshall holds one shared patent on a method of reorganizing IMS databases online. He is also an expert on NIST security standards. Marshall remains an active educator and speaker on numerous z/OS security and compliance topics at RACF User Groups (RUGs), Vanguard’s annual security and compliance conference and other industry conferences.

Marshall holds a BS in computer science and MBA from Sonoma State University.

Dick Morales –  Senior Software Developer

Dick Morales is a senior software developer primarily responsible for Vanguard Advisor. He has more than 40 years experience in the Information Technology area, beginning at Ft. Lee, Virginia in the Finance Computer Center in 1968. 20 of those years were spent as a systems programmer at what is now CenturyLink. Before retiring in 2001, he managed a team of systems programmers responsible for maintaining the MVS Operating Systems on more than 57 mainframes.

Morales worked as a contract developer for Vanguard for 10 years before becoming a full-time employee in 2001. During this time, he wrote Analyzer and co-wrote Advisor. Since becoming a full-time employee, he co-wrote Policy Manager and was the senior product architect over the Administrator, Analyzer and Advisor products. He was also a developer of the Vanguard Offline product

Bruce Schaefer – Director of Research and Development

Bruce Schaefer has been with Vanguard for more than 15 years and is responsible for leading the development and enhancement efforts for Vanguard Configuration Manager, Analyzer and Policy Manager. He brings over 35 years of software development experience in all aspects of the project life cycle – from system requirements to product delivery. Schaefer’s experience and technical leadership help Vanguard meet customers’ expectations for automated solutions to their challenges in security administration, auditing and regulatory compliance.

Prior to his current role, Schaefer was architect of the QuickGen feature used in Vanguard products, including the QuickGen Tag Language that gives customers the ability to generate custom formatted reports. He is also the architect and developer of the email API, one of the Vanguard Enabler technologies used by all Vanguard products. Schaefer was the senior architect for Administrator, Advisor and Analyzer. He simplified Vanguard releases by developing the tool used internally to improve the SMP/E PTF build process. Schaefer is proficient in C, C++, BAL (Assembler), REXX, Pascal, Visual Basic, SQL, Fortran, and Smalltalk. He has more than 30 years experience with z/OS systems, RACF, TCPIP, XML, SMTP, SMP/E, and LE. Occasionally, you will find him as one of the instructors at the annual Vanguard Security & Compliance conference.

Prior to Vanguard, Schaefer worked at TeraCloud Corporation, Amdahl, and Dassault Systems of America. He holds a B.S. degree in Computer Science from California State University, Northridge.