Matthew Burdick is a Vice President, CISO, and Principal Consultant at Blair Carlisle — and one of the firm's earliest principals. We sat down with Matt to talk about his journey in IT and cybersecurity, what makes Blair Carlisle different, and the value he brings to clients as a fractional CISO.
Tell us a bit about your background.
I've been in IT and information security for over 20 years, starting in infrastructure and evolving into cybersecurity risk and compliance as those disciplines became more inseparable. I've served as a fractional CISO for a range of companies across industries — healthcare, financial services, technology — and I've operated my own technology companies, which gives me a very practical perspective on what security programs look like from the inside.
You were one of the early members of the Blair Carlisle team. What attracted you?
The firm was on the precipice of massive growth. I saw an opportunity to help build something — a compliance and IT risk management consulting practice that was genuinely built for the modern, cloud-native client. Not a legacy firm adapting to the cloud, but one that understood it from the ground up. That was compelling.
What does the "A-team" culture mean to you in practice?
It means relentlessness. You never phone it in. You never give a client a mediocre answer because you're tired or stretched. Every engagement gets the same quality of thinking and attention. That's not a marketing slogan — it's a standard you either hold yourself to or you don't. At Blair Carlisle, we hold each other to it.
If I had to describe the firm in one word, it would be: Bold. We take on hard problems for clients who need real answers, not hedged consulting-speak.
What's the most important thing you've learned from client work?
That the first impression matters enormously in this business. Clients are trusting you with sensitive information about their vulnerabilities and their operations. If you show up unprepared or imprecise, you've damaged something that's very hard to repair. I operate by the principle: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. That applies to every deliverable, every meeting, every engagement.
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