Who we are
Independentsince 2009.
Orion Secure was founded in Syracuse, New York in 2009 - as Cyber Defense Institute - to help businesses protect the sensitive data all of us trust them to hold on our behalf. Fifteen-plus years later we still do one thing: run security and compliance programs for regulated organizations, from Syracuse, New York - serving New York, New England, Pennsylvania, and eastern Canadawithin a day’s drive of Toronto, Ottawa, Montréal, and Québec City. When the work calls for being in the room, we’re in the room.
We’ve grown almost entirely by referral. Clients stay because senior consultants do the work - every consultant holds a graduate degree and senior consultants hold industry certifications such as CISSP and CISM; nothing is handed off to a junior bench, and nothing is quietly a sales channel for someone’s product.
Principal consultant
Brandon Finton
President and Principal Consultant · MS, CISSP, CISM
Brandon leads Orion Secure’s engagements himself. He joined the company in 2015, bringing more than twenty years in security and IT: information security supervisor at a large community hospital, infrastructure engineer for a hospital system, systems administrator at an Ivy League university, and software quality assurance engineer for a global business process outsourcing firm.
He has taken organizations in healthcare, financial services, insurance, manufacturing, retail, and defense through HIPAA, PCI DSS, NYS DFS, and GLBA - gap assessments, risk management, audit support, vulnerability management, and penetration testing, each mapped to NIST or the framework the regulator expects. He has also worked through multiple declared information system disaster recoveries, which is why incident response and recovery planning are part of every program he builds.
Brandon holds a master’s in Telecommunications and Network Management from Syracuse University and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration – Management from RIT, and is a CISSP and CISM. He has spoken at more than a dozen industry conferences, has been published in the Syracuse Business Journal and NYIA’s Your NY Connections, and serves on the board of the Central New York ISACA chapter.
What we hold ourselves to
Independence
We sell judgment, not products. No reseller margins, no referral fees, no exceptions.
A senior team
Every consultant holds a graduate degree and industry certifications such as CISSP and CISM - and teaches security to IT professionals and graduate students.
Standards-based method
Every engagement maps to NIST or the framework your regulator expects - so the work holds up under examination.
Ethics
We tell you what you need to hear, in writing, even when it isn’t what you hoped to read.