Jim Slaby

James R. Slaby is Research Director, Sourcing Security and Risk Strategies for HfS Research, where he focuses on helping buyers assess outsourcing providers across a broad range of governance, compliance, and operational issues in the context of security and risk management. Slaby is working to develop tools and metrics to help evaluate a provider’s physical security regime, its IT security infrastructure (including application, network, storage, virtualization, endpoint, mobility, identity & access management, encryption and key management), and its business continuity and disaster recovery regimes. He also focuses on compliance issues across regulatory domains, ensuring HfS clients understand where data resides and how it is protected both in transit and at rest.

A fifteen-year veteran of the high-tech research and infrastructure security industry, Slaby most recently served as managing director of the security and networking practices at technology research firm TheInfoPro, where he conducted research into Fortune 500 technology adoption plans, feature and spending priorities, and perceptions of leading vendors. Prior to TheInfoPro, he served as a senior analyst at Yankee Group, Forrester Research, and Giga Information Group, where he ran research and consulting practices in network security, enterprise networking and telecom services. He has published more than 350 research articles, spoken at scores of industry conferences and symposia, and been widely quoted in the business and technology press.

On the vendor side, Slaby has specialized in launching new vertical and solutions marketing programs for such infrastructure manufacturers as Sonus Networks, Acme Packet, Bay Networks, Motorola, and others. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College.