End Users '20 under 40' 2017—Matt Cain

Matt Cain, 38

Senior investigator—corporate security, Verizon

New York

Working as the senior investigator for one of the largest telecommunications providers in the world is something that Matt Cain said has been very rewarding.

“Originally, I wanted to be in law enforcement but I took a position in LP catching shoplifters while going to college and never looked back,” he explained. “The more I learned about the industry, the more I learned I had a niche and I moved up very quickly.”

He continued, “I've also had a lot of really good leaders and mentors along the way.”

At Verizon, Cain works with a team of investigators in the company's Great Lakes Market, covering approximately 300 stores in nine states. “We also conduct physical security assessments and provide a lot of training and support to our stores,” he noted.� “As you can imagine, there are a lot of moving parts at Verizon due to our size but we have a great leadership team and we all collaborate very well.”

In the area of new and exciting technology, Cain said he has always been interested in predictive analytics and the use of data.

“Extracting what you think might be completely irrelevant information, plugging it into a model and eventually seeing a positive ROI can be pretty rewarding,” he said. “Unfortunately for our industry, we can sometimes be seen as reactive versus proactive, but this technology can help change that stigma by getting in front of problems and being more forward thinking.”

Looking to the future, he thinks there will be “quite a few changes in order to keep up with new technologies such as facial recognition, etc.,” he noted. “I'm also interested to see how the Internet of Things (IoT) world plays a part in how things are integrated.”