End Users '20 under 40' 2016—Evan Morgan

Evan Morgan, 28

North America security support engineer, Equinix

Ashburn, Va.

Although Evan Morgan studied criminal justice in college, an internship with Equinix working with one of the company's regional security engineering teams, introduced him to security. “I fell in love with the company and culture, and after graduation I was offered a job with the same security engineering team I interned with and have been with Equinix ever since,” he explained.

Morgan provides physical security as well as policy and procedure support, guidance, project planning and oversight to all of Equinix's Americas IBX Operations and Security teams. Equinix, which is in 40 markets across five continents, connects the world's businesses to their customers, employees and partners inside interconnected data centers.

One of Morgan's biggest challenges is remaining proactive. “You have to be sure that as a business you don't become complacent with the technologies you use, or the policies you live by,” he said. “Every day there are new technologies coming out that may be beneficial to a business, but how do you move to implement these and which ones do you ultimately choose?”

Another challenge is staying up-to-date with the ever-growing number of certifications and compliance requirements in the industry, which “keeps our team busy,” said Morgan.

On the technology side, Morgan is interested in biometrics. “More specifically, wearable biometric technology is something we are taking a hard look at right now,” he noted. “Another interesting technology is RFID and Bluetooth access points for movement tracking. The idea of being able to see and track where everyone is in a specific site at any given time has a ton of benefits with regards to life safety and security. Predictive analytics is also very promising and continues to help our security officers to be more efficient and effective with their time.”