Professional Services Team

The Vanguard Professional Services team is renowned worldwide for its expertise as security solutions professionals. Team members have on average 30 years of mainframe and enterprise security experience. Vanguard consultants work independently or with internal staff members to complete pre-defined and scoped security projects on time and on budget.

Dustin Hayes

Manager of Professional Services

Dustin Hayes joined Vanguard’s Professional Services team in Oct 2013.

Dustin first started his professional career managing UNIX systems for the United States Air Force. Most recently before joining Vanguard’s Professional Services team, Dustin was the architect responsible for the enterprise solution to meet the PCI-DSS Level 1 card processor compliance requirements, including the design and implementation of the infrastructure team to meet a mix-environment solution. Additionally he conducted all of the required penetration testing and vulnerability assessment processes.

Currently he has expanded his knowledge to include; z/OS, Solaris, Linux, Microsoft, VMware, PBX/VoIP Phone Systems, Cisco and Networking while continuing to focus on Security and GRC related issues. This specialized background has resulted in experience with multiple different Regulatory and Compliance projects. He has over 10 years experience maintaining online transaction based data centers in multiple states and countries.

Doug Behrends

Senior Professional Services Consultant

Doug Behrends joined the Vanguard Professional Services team with over 30 years of information systems experience in 2003. Doug is currently focusing on remediation work to assist Fortune 500 companies in improving their security environment. Major activities related to this have included evaluating and implementing role-based security access structures and converting production batch processes from a single user ID to unique user IDs by line of business.

Prior to joining Vanguard, he performed multiple IT functions such as Operations Manager, Office Systems, Application and Systems programming and DB Management. His breadth of knowledge spans across numerous verticals including manufacturing, insurance and financial services where his expertise lent itself to MVS system installation and maintenance, productivity improvement/automation, security assessment and product design.

Since 1997 Doug has focused his career solely on information security for z/OS and RACF. Before joining Vanguard as a full-time member of the Professional Services team, he contributed as a Beta tester for the Vanguard product suite. Today, in addition to his security activities, he continues to provide insight into streamlining and automating processes.

Jay Burrows

Senior Professional Services Consultant

Jay Burrows joined Vanguard Professional Services team in January of 2020. Jay has 10 years in the Information Technology field spanning across International private sectors as well as US Government and Military. Jay has over 5 years’ experience working exclusively in RACF and Information Security focused in identity management solutions, digital forensics, auditing/compliance, key asset protection, digital certificates, and more. Jay also has experience in z/OS systems programming, coding, networking, and some ACF2.

Since 2009, Jay has also been serving part-time in the Army National Guard for 7 years as a LAN/WAN network manager, 2.5 years as a Discovery and Counter Infiltration Cyber Analyst, and now most recently a Digital Communications Team Chief.

Jay maintains his CEH certification, Security +, as well as other US Military recognized certifications and he is currently in pursuit of completing his AAS in Computer Information Technology with a focus on Information Security.

Keith Hansford

Senior Professional Services Consultant

Keith Hansford joined the Vanguard Professional Services team in November of 2019. He has over 30 years in the Information Technology field supporting the IBM Mainframe environment in large financial institutions, mainframe storage and software vendors in the private sector, as well as US Government and military installations. Keith has over 26 years experience in ACF2 and z/OS systems programming, automation, virtualization, storage management, performance and tuning, project management, program product support and software development, pre and post sales vendor support, professional services, technical services, security administration, and application support and development. He was instrumental in bringing a major DoD z/OS mainframe data center into compliance under the mandated DISA STIG requirements for ACF2, and has a Bachelor of Science – Computer Science degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

John Hilman

Senior Professional Services Consultant

John Hilman brought over 25 years of information systems experience when he joined Vanguard´s Professional Services team in 2005. Leveraging his technical background and expertise, John aids clients with security assessments, remediation projects, DB2 internal security migration and training for security administrators.

Prior to joining Vanguard, John spent 20 years with IBM, the last five as a Certified Technical Trainer for RACF security. Throughout his extensive career, he has held numerous IT positions in Computer Operations, Systems Programming, Security Audit and Security Administration.

After his tenure at IBM, John accepted the role of Training Director at EKC, Inc. where he was responsible for training security administrators and auditors on using the CA-ACF2 and RACF security subsystems. John´s expertise has made him a highly sought after speaker and educator. His engagements include CA World, IBM Secure World and Vanguard´s own Security Conferences, where he has been awarded the Top Gun Award several times. Vanguard´s prestigious Top Gun Award is reserved for the instructor that receives the highest rating from students following the conference.

Tony Nix

Senior Professional Services Consultant

Tony has been an Information Security Professional for over 30 years with expertise in RACF and mainframe security technologies.

Tony maintains a CISSP certification and received his Master of Science Information Technology degree from the University of Maryland University College and Bachelor of Science Information Technology degree from the California State University Long Beach. Prior to joining Vanguard’s Professional Services team, Tony completed a 20-year career with IBM servicing domestic and international security customers across government, financial, retail, services, and other industries. Tony has performed duties as a systems analyst, line and project manager, programmer, pre-sales technical support, and system deployment.

Tony lives in Southern California and is proud and fortunate to return to Vanguard as a member of the Professional Services team.

John Sundberg

Senior Professional Services Consultant

John Sundberg brings 40 plus years of IT experience and knowledge to Vanguard. Before joining us, he was an IT Specialist with IBM, assisting countless organizations with many challenging assignments. His diverse background includes hardware planning, software migrations and new product installations.

Before joining IBM, he had a twenty-seven year tenure with a major broadcasting company. In this capacity he implemented, and architected their first security product ACF2. Two decades later he oversaw and architected the transition to RACF. He and his team performed the conversion using only in-house talent and the Vanguard Administrator. This environment demanded high availability with little or no down time. He has since gone on to work with other organizations in the RACF security arena. John’s focus is on security remediation and assessments.

Stuart Walton

Senior Professional Services Consultant

Stuart Walton joined Vanguard’s Professional Services team in June of 2013 and has 34 years of experience in Information Technology.

Before joining Vanguard, Stuart spent 22 years with Blue Turtle Technologies supporting clients using a multitude of software products on various operating systems both in and out of the security arena. In 2003, when Blue Turtle became the South African distributor for Vanguard, Stuart continued working as a senior technical consultant and moved his primary focus to Vanguard software and services. His expertise includes dealing with government facilities, retail, finance, health, utility, metal industries and insurance companies.

Prior to 1991, Stuart worked as a Systems Network Programmer and Systems Programmer installing and implementing 3rd party software tools for a variety of companies.