End Users '20 under 40' 2016—Michael Brzozowski

Michael Brzozowski, 36

Risk manager, Symcor

Mississauga, Ontario

Michael Brzozowski is the risk manager for Symcor, a payment processing and client communications processing company owned by three of the largest banks in Canada.

“We do run the largest private data archive in Canada. So, we have a lot of security that goes around that,” Brzozowski said. The company does “back office processing on behalf of those shareholder partners of ours as well as other clients in the finance, technology, telecommunications, energy and government sectors.”

Brzozowski started at Symcor in 2009 and has been in his current role since 2013. “I design, build and manage our enterprise-wide security systems, which is inclusive of CCTV, access control, intrusion control, public address systems—and those can obviously be a little complex in an organization such as ours.”

At Symcor, Brzozowski implemented a system for better tracking entrance to the facilities. “[Since] when I built that two years ago with some of my Symcor colleagues here, we've actually managed to reduce over 8,000 hours of manpower and drastically increased our compliance rates,” he said.

Brzozowski has a certification in crime prevention through environmental design as well as PSP and CPP certifications. He is the vice chair of the ASIS chapter in Toronto and the vice chair of the ASIS young professionals council.

“The challenge for us as an industry, I think � is really getting people to understand the importance of security and to really try to sidestep the fact that in the businesses' eyes it's often an afterthought and an ROI negative aspect,” said Brzozowski, who expects that this challenge will continue into the future.

Brzozowski got started in security through his work with a credit union, starting as a teller, then becoming involved with compliance. “From there I was given an opportunity to look after the records management and the security portion of the same credit union,” he said.