Heather Stratford-Geibel is a rarity in her profession.

She is CEO of IT Training Solutions, a Spokane-based company that specializes in cybersecurity, but also provides instruction and consulting in other facets of information technology. Research shows that women account for only about one out of 10 cybersecurity professionals.

“I never thought I would find myself in such an industry minority, in an area that is so underrepresented for women,” Stratford-Geibel says.

She notes that IT Training Solutions is a federally recognized woman-owned small business and says women make up its entire executive team. Her desire to see more women pursue career opportunities in that field, she says, has led her to make presentations on that topic at professional conferences.

“I think, in the next several years, I will be doing more and more of that. It’s a passion I have,” she says.

IT Training Solutions provides virtual and onsite training on cybersecurity-related topics such as ethical hacking, penetration testing, secure programming, network intrusion investigations, firewalls, forensics, mobile devices, and end-user preventive steps.

Separate from the cybersecurity work, it provides basic courses in programming and networks as well as highly specialized certifications, and it customizes its offerings as needed to fit clients’ specific needs.

Stratford-Geibel says the 11-year-old business, which she moved here from Salt Lake City two years ago when she purchased it from its founder using some of her retirement assets, has clients across the country and in Canada, but she’s eager to strengthen its presence in the Inland Northwest.

“We want to build up our local clients,” she says. 

She says the company’s underlying goal is to help its clients become more efficient, more secure, and—in the case of private businesses—more profitable.

“Everybody who has a computer in their business could use us,” she asserts, adding, “What we want to do is develop long-term relationships.”

IT Training Solutions operates from a studio at Stratford’s South Hill home at 633 E. 25th, although she says she’s looking for an office space to lease and expects to relocate the business this spring or summer. The company currently has four employees in addition to her, three of them here and one on the East Coast, and subcontracts with 20 to 25 instructors around the country.

 Despite its small size, the company has worked with numerous large corporations, universities, and local, state, and provincial governments in North America and Europe, Stratford says. The universities include Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, Duke, Texas, Minnesota, and New York University, plus many others, among them North Idaho College and the University of Idaho in the Inland Northwest.

 “Universities are a strong suit for us,” Stratford-Geibel says.

In recent examples of the work it does, she says, it provided financial systems-related security and compliance training in January to 75 employees at General Motors Co. headquarters in Detroit, and high-end Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) training last summer to about 50 employees at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison.

“We will be going back this summer. We’re looking at rolling out security awareness training for the entire University of Wisconsin,” once the company receives an official go-ahead from the university, she says.

IT Training Solutions also recently attained preferred-vendor status for security services with the U.S. General Services Administration, Stratford-Geibel says, adding, “All of a sudden, we’re starting to bid on a lot more military and government projects.”

In the Spokane area, it also has done work for a mix of government and private clients, including IT company Nuvodia LLC, Pathology Associates Medical Laboratories, and the city of Spokane.

Stratford-Geibel declines to talk specifically about the company’s revenues, but says they were up 45 percent last year and she expects even stronger growth this year.

“We already have in the works contracts that will beat our gross revenues for last year,” she says, adding, “Good things are happening.”

Stratford-Geibel also declines to talk specifically about the company’s fees and how they’re structured, saying, “We provide virtual training in a lot of technical and certification areas that is economical and cost-effective for any company, and we have 125 of those (training offerings).”

She says, “We also provide a lot of on-site training, and the on-site training is typically one to five days. Because we keep our overhead low, we are more cost-effective and lower priced than our competitors.”

One of the hottest areas of cybersecurity right now involves protection against ransomware, which Stratford-Geibel contends is “the fastest-growing epidemic in the United States.”

Ransomware refers to malicious software that installs covertly on victims’ computers, then encrypts files and prevents the victims from using the computer normally until they’ve paid money—essentially a ransom—to the person or people who initiated the attack.

“Companies of large and small size are all vulnerable to it,” Stratford-Geibel says.

She moved here in 2009 with her now ex-husband, who was a recent medical school graduate who had accepted a hospital emergency room position here. About a year and a half later, she says, she sold a marketing firm, named Moxie Marketing, which she had founded in Boston while he was completing a medical residency there.

She says she purchased IT Training Solutions in February 2015, motivated in part by years of involvement in technology-related matters in earlier career positions.

“This was the right path for me,” she says, although she adds, “When we moved the business, we had no clients in the state of Washington.”

Originally from upstate New York, near Saratoga, Stratford came west to study international relations and communications at Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah. She left school to serve an 18-month service mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Central America, working on infrastructure, literacy, and leadership development programs in Guatemala and Belize.

She returned to Provo to finish her bachelor’s degree at BYU, and then worked for a year and a half at a subsidiary of the Covey Leadership Center, a provider of time management training and assessment services. Serving as production manager for a publication named “Executive Excellence,” she says, “I worked with all of these big names in business and leadership, and I liked it.”

She later earned a master’s degree in business administration from Thunderbird: The School of Global Management, located in the Phoenix area, and became marketing director for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning division of a large regional mechanical contractor.

Of IT Information Solutions, she says, “What’s different about our company is we’re not ‘off-the-shelf.’ A lot of times (with cybersecurity providers), it’s a one-size-fits-all (type of service). Our solution is very different than that. We pull together the resources that are what you need.”

Stratford-Geibel is confident and excited about her company’s future, saying she has aspirations to grow its client base not just locally and nationally, but internationally.

“IT security is not only the technology, but the servicing of companies,” she says, “and I understand customer service and what customers need, and that is what we specialize in.”