Paul Tracey Gets The IT And Cyber Security Conversation Started

Growing up in South Glen Falls in rural Upstate New York, Paul Tracey was sure of one thing: computers were the future. He knew it when he was in junior high school, fascinated by how technology worked and programming video games into graphing calculators when he was supposed to be doing math classwork.

When as a pressman in the printing industry he suffered a catastrophic shoulder injury that would prevent him from ever again doing manual labor, he became determined that computers would be his future. A state program afforded him the opportunity to return to school and be retrained in a chosen field. He chose networking, something he loved and a field that he envisioned would become increasingly important in the business world.

After graduating in 2009 with a degree in information technology, he managed an outsourced help-desk call center whose clients included Verizon and Comcast. He was responsible for up to 400 employees. Paul experienced a shortsighted corporate culture that blatantly trained its employees to upsell even the most irate callers – or risk losing their jobs. It was clear that the corporate outlook was to reward sales and not support.

Another job, IT support for a major hospital where he was rapidly promoted to operations manager, would be the last time he worked for someone else. The corporation was lax in cyber security and compliance and thought nothing of paying fines. When he raised questions about these policies, the answer was administrative leave. Paul was determined to start his own company that would focus on small business owners who put their livelihoods at risk with what they didn’t know about IT.

Paul Tracey founded Innovative Technologies in 2012 to help small businesses expand their vision of the role of IT in their company.

Paul Tracey founded Innovative Technologies in 2012 to help small businesses expand their vision of the role of IT in their company beyond calling in someone to fix a computer when it broke down. After working for companies for whom compliance and cyber security were afterthoughts, Paul committed himself not only to being a full-service managed security services provider, but also to helping small business owners establish a company culture that supported safe, secure and efficient IT.

A recognized cyber security expert, Paul is the author of the recently published book Delete The Hackers Playbook. In the decade that Innovative Technologies has been in business, not one client has ever paid ransomware. He is also the co-author of Cyber Storm, due out in early 2022. In this multi-perspective look at cyber security, Paul focuses on HIPAA compliance.

Paul still lives in Upstate NY. His two passions are live music and his motorcycles. He spends his free time at concerts by former Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh and tributes to the music of Frank Zappa. He has donated his time to several local charities and served as CTO for the Glen Falls semiprofessional football team, the Greenjackets.