James R. Slaby

James R. Slaby is Research Director, Sourcing Security and Risk Strategies for HfS Research. His research examines IT security and corporate risk as dimensions of business augmentation services like BPO, IT outsourcing and cloud services. His primary research goal is to help buyers select services providers and negotiate contracts and SLAs that more intelligently accommodate security and risk issues.

Slaby focuses on evaluating services providers, examining a broad range of governance, compliance, and security operations issues, and developing tools and metrics to help buyers evaluate a provider’s physical security regime, IT security infrastructure (including identity management, data privacy, application security and infrastructure security), and business continuity mechanisms. His research agenda also explores emerging issues like cloud security, the security of new mobile platforms, and breach management.

Slaby is a fifteen-year veteran of the high-tech research and infrastructure security industry. Prior to HfS Research, he served as managing director of the security and networking practices at TheInfoPro, where he focused on Fortune 500 technology adoption plans, feature and spending priorities, and perceptions of leading vendors.  He also held senior analyst roles 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.