Carol Woodbury met her first computer in a high school math class in Iowa. Although rudimentary, it triggered a spark that blazed a few years later when she progressed from a starting secretarial position at IBM to completing a degree in computer science, leading a team in the System i security arena, and founding her own company.

"Being surrounded by technology makes you realize that it's the place to be," she recalls.

The upcoming 2007 COMMON conference in Anaheim is where Woodbury will be in a few days, offering the kind of gritty security sessions she has delivered for many years and also adding a new vista as a keynoter at the COMMON IT Executive Conference.

A people person who loves public speaking, she's pumped!

Woodbury is the president and co-founder of SkyView Partners, Inc., a Seattle-based firm specializing in security policy and compliance software as well as security consulting and remediation services. The co-author of the noted books Experts' Guide to OS/400 and i5/OS and Implementing AS/400 Security, she shares her 17 years of IBM and private enterprise experience and expertise in security at user gatherings and conferences throughout the world, putting together articles and teaching courses during breathers.

Writing for System iNEWS magazine and other publications, her subjects range from "How Safe Is Your Private Data" to "The Essential Guide to Encryption" and "Tame the Compliance Jungle." Her e-learning and CD contributions span i5/OS security fundamentals and advanced security topics.

The Woodbury menu for the upcoming COMMON event features "Laying the Foundation of OS/400 and i5/OS Security," for which she won an award for "best new session" in 2005, "A Step-by-Step Approach to Implementing Object Security," "Lost — The Aftermath of a Security Breach," and "Compliance — Help! Where Do I Start?"

"I enjoy speaking. My goal is to try to make the topic interesting and hopefully give the people in the audience a better understanding of the issues. If I can help make their jobs or their lives easier by giving them some information they didn’t have before, then I feel like I have done my job," Woodbury says. "I also like talking to people and answering their questions. That's the best part of the conferences." She views her presentation at the Executive Conference as a "fun challenge" because her audience will be less highly technical and more business oriented than her usual listeners.

From the initial technology flash in that Iowa classroom, Woodbury has fashioned a career helping System i people make changes.

Her 16 years in Rochester began in system testing from a customer perspective, a viewpoint ingrained in her work ever since. She spent some time involved with the command prompter function before progressing to a 10-year position as the System i security team leader and architect. This introduced her to interfacing with a variety of large customers and briefing clients on new releases.

"I really enjoyed taking the technology, relating it to whatever situation the person in front of me had, and providing a solution," Woodbury says. "One of the things I loved doing and still do is determining the knowledge level of clients and then deciding how I can give them the information they need in the terms they can understand."

She left the Midwest and IBM when a company in Seattle beckoned, and after a stint with that outfit, Woodbury and business colleague John Vanderwall founded SkyView Partners, Inc., five years ago and moved full time into security compliance software and security services. She is the techie of the team, handling the majority of the consulting in a score of states and countries, designing products such as SkyView's well-received Risk Assessor and Policy Minder software, and managing product development and customer service.

A typical week finds Woodbury on site with clients, analyzing their security configurations and making changes to ensure that the customers are in compliance with their own policies and that their data is secure.

"What keeps this job interesting is being able to go to different companies with different personnel and see how they use the System i to run their business," she says. "It's fascinating to learn how they are using the System i in their organizations. It's amazing how many ways the system functions."

The hot issues Woodbury helps clients tackle include securing their data properly, developing security policies, and interpreting what the laws and regulations mean in terms of their System i security configurations. She also tries to help raise awareness among organizations of key concerns. For example, she notes, "There's a lack of education in workforces in recognizing social engineering. That's where people are trying to get access to information that they have no right to but act as if they do. Training employees to recognize and prevent this is a challenge for most organizations. But the motivation to pursue this is the fact that you can turn your workforce from being your biggest liability into being one of your biggest assets in protecting your data."

Woodbury sees one of her professional plusses as the fact that she operates her own business. "It's one thing to be busy and work a lot of hours for somebody else. With your own company there’s definitely motivation to attempt to accomplish more things because it's yours," she says. "I thoroughly enjoy being in business for myself and having a partner with the skills he [Vanderwall] has. God has blessed us and given us some very interesting opportunities."

Although her work often draws her away from Seattle, Woodbury appreciates living in a beautiful part of the country. "I absolutely love it, and most winters I don't have to shovel my precipitation," she jokes, recalling her years in Minnesota.

As her career moves on, she hopes that SkyView will continue to grow. "We have future plans for other products and how to get into different markets."

A goal she has for personal evolvement is to participate in some of the trips her business partner makes to countries such as Ukraine and Thailand, teaching business concepts based on Biblical principles. "It's a unique opportunity to equip people with the skills to develop their own businesses and support themselves," Woodbury says. "We have been given certain talents, and it's important to try to use them as best we can in a responsible way." For her, that means helping others make the changes they need to secure their livelihoods.