Chad Francis (NetSec/Strata) - Chad is a graduate of Penn State University and has over 20 years of experience in IT, Networking and Cyber Security. Chad has been working with Palo Alto Networks products for 12 years, utilizing NGFWs including VM-series and Cloud firewalls, Panorama and CDSS (Cloud Delivered Security Services- e.g. TP, WF, URL, etc.). Chad is responsible for Optiv’s pre-sales enablement and support to accelerate growth between Palo Alto Networks and Optiv. He is also focused on supporting Optiv’s post-sales implementation team and working with marketing on Palo Alto specific campaigns.

Chad came to Optiv, in 2022, from Penn State University. While at Penn State he was a Sr. Cyber Security Engineer on the Cyber Network Defense team. He focused on Palo Alto Networks design and architecture for both on-premise and the PSU public cloud solutions, along with day-to-day operations. Chad previously worked in Healthcare at Penn State Health as well as R&D in the DoD space along with experience in the manufacturing industry.