Clarity for CISOs - when it matters most.
About IANS
AI has given every CISO access to plausible answers. What it can't provide is proprietary, practitioner-validated intelligence — the kind that comes from what your peers actually decided, under real constraints, with real consequences.
IANS is built on a proprietary database of thousands of anonymized conversations between 1,000+ clients and 170+ Faculty cybersecurity practitioners. We record, summarize, anonymize and index these conversations — with client consent, strict anonymization protocols, and human verification — to surface insights that generic AI simply cannot replicate. Our data is practitioner-verified and growing every day.
What makes IANS different
General-purpose AI learns from what's published. We learn from what's practiced. When a CISO asks IANS about AI governance frameworks or Zero Trust deployment, the answer isn't drawn from vendor marketing materials and public blog posts — it's drawn from anonymized peer playbooks, proprietary benchmarks, and the hard-won experience of practitioners who have actually done it, at organizations like yours, under real budget and regulatory constraints.
Three things make this possible — and unreplicable:
- First-party private data. Our intelligence base of 6,000+ practitioner conversations, thousands of data points from confidential surveys and 6,500+ content pieces is exclusively ours. It's not scraped from the web. It exists because our clients trust us with their most candid security thinking.
- Governance and accountability. Clients share data with us because of how we handle it — consent, anonymization, and human verification loops that ensure quality. That model is why the data exists at all.
- 170+ active practitioners. Our Faculty aren't analysts observing the market. They're CISOs and practitioners currently building and implementing the programs you're trying to build.
Why IANS
Drive decisions with unbiased insights
Trusted insights and data built on a truly vendor-agnostic model.
Proven approaches
Field-tested Faculty guidance and proven best practices from security leaders.
Cut through the noise
Stay focused with daily curated insights, threat briefings and incident support.
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Our Story
As a US Navy strike fighter pilot, our founder and CEO, Phil Gardner, established the principles that IANS is based on:
Sweat the details. Be a good wingman. And focus on what matters.
From the beginning, IANS has had a single focus: cybersecurity. Not general business advisory, not vendor-sponsored research — security, practitioner-built, and vendor-agnostic. Today, that focus has evolved into something more powerful: a proprietary intelligence platform that mines the collective experience of our CISO community and Faculty and makes it available to you when and where you need it.
IANS Leadership
Phil Gardner
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Having built the original end-user research offering, Phil now oversees all strategic and operational decisions at IANS. Phil began his career with seven years in the U.S. Navy as an F/A-18 combat pilot & Weapons Requirements Officer. After receiving an MBA from Harvard, he worked at Goldman Sachs and later became an Associate with McKinsey in Boston. In 1996, Phil became a founder of Provant, a publicly traded training company serving the Fortune 1000 & Federal Government. He left Provant in 2000 to launch IANS. Phil graduated at the top of his US Navy Flight School class in 1987.
Collin Snow
Senior Vice President of Sales
Collin is Senior Vice President of Sales for the IANS sales organization responsible for driving sales strategy for both new business acquisition and client retention. Collin, a 13-year IANS veteran, began his IANS career as an End User Relations Sales Rep advancing to an Area Vice President role to grow team head count and sales revenue more than tenfold. His skill in orchestrating our client lifecycle and implementing sales process methodology plays an integral role in IANS’ overall growth. Collin excels at building strong relationships with CISOs and their teams. His unique partnerships with our clients help them make better, faster decisions to ultimately reduce risk and maximize security investments. Collins fine-tuned the IANS Client Advisory Board, fostering development of many new products and services that IANS clients now enjoy. Collin holds a Bachelor of Science degree from James Cook University in Australia, chairs the James Cook University of America Foundation, and holds graduate certificates in Applied Project Management and Business Analysis from Boston University.
Emily Sweeney
Chief People Officer
Emily is Chief People Officer and leads all aspects of the People function with a goal of building a scalable, high-impact people strategy, ensuring IANS continues to attract and retain top talent as it grows to meet the evolving needs of the cybersecurity community.
Prior to IANS Emily was Vice President of HR Strategy at Cengage Group. In that role, she partnered closely with the Chief People Officer and executive leadership to drive enterprise-wide initiatives across HR Operations, performance management, leadership development, and people analytics. Before that, she spent seven years at Boston Consulting Group, advising clients on organizational design and culture transformation.
Emily is a strategic and action-oriented HR leader and problem solver, working alongside business leaders to develop strategies for impact and success. She has an MBA from Wharton and a BA from Holy Cross.
Kurt Reisenberg
Kurt is Chief Operating Officer at IANS, responsible for the company’s research, product, consulting, technology, and client services functions. He brings to IANS 30 years of experience in the information services sector, including significant expertise in launching and scaling subscription products for C-level executive clients, creating unique, actionable content and data assets, and aligning go-to-market teams around aggressive growth strategies. Kurt was a key member of the team that grew CEB (Corporate Executive Board) from approximately $15 million in revenue in 1994 to $1 billion when acquired by Gartner in 2017.
During his career at CEB, he helped develop and hone the firm’s research methodology and held many senior leadership roles, including Managing Director of CEB’s financial services practice, General Manager of the finance, legal, strategy & innovation, and operations practices, and finally Chief Commercial Officer. When CEB was acquired by Gartner, Kurt served for two years as SVP, Global Business Sales. More recently, he was CEO of Datos Insights, the leading provider of research, advice, and data to the financial services industry. Kurt holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) in English & American Literature from Brown University.
Rob Johnson
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER
Rob is the Vice President of Finance at IANS. In this role he oversees the Accounting, Finance, Human Resources and IT functions. Prior to joining IANS, he worked at Venture Advisors, a leading provider of outsourced CFO and Controller services. He has also held financial management positions at Fast Search & Transfer, m-Qube and WBUR. He has over 20 years of financial experience with extensive experience in Financial Reporting, Budgeting & Forecasting and Process Improvement. Rob holds an MBA from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University as well as a Master of Science in E-Commerce from Boston University. He is a graduate of Bentley College with a BS in Accounting and is a Certified Public Accountant.
Paul Henderson
Chief Product Officer
Paul is the Chief Product Officer at IANS, overseeing the product and technology teams, with a focus on expanding the firm’s portfolio of product and technology solutions and pioneering new services that enhance the value of IANS’ digital insights for the cybersecurity community. Paul brings to IANS over 25 years of experience across the information services sector, with leadership roles spanning product development, data management, publishing, and operations.
Dan Klein
Executive Vice President, Faculty and Professional Services
Prior to IANS, Dan was EVP of Analytics at Fastmarkets, responsible for leading a global team of economists and analysts. Before that, he was CEO of Fastmarkets RISI, a leading data and analytics firm focused on the forest products industry. Prior to Fastmarkets, Dan spent 15 years at Forrester Research, where he held several leadership roles, including in its consulting and advisory practices, where he was responsible for building and scaling its offerings and delivery. Dan holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Our Services
IANS delivers what no analyst firm or AI can replicate: governed intelligence drawn from private, practitioner-validated conversations with 170+ expert Faculty. Through Ask IANS, get instant access to benchmarks, implementation guidance, and vendor insights — anonymized, quality-controlled, and growing every day.
Decision Support
Make confident decisions with on-demand expert guidance and resources.
Ask-An-Expert
Gain confidence in your security decisions with direct access to expert Faculty practitioners.
Professional Development
Unlock your team’s performance with in-person and online training.
Events
Learn from leading industry practitioners and network with your peers.