Practitioner first. Consultant second.
Founder & Managing Member
IRONGATE Risk Partners exists because too much GRC consulting produces reports that sit on a shelf.
Charles McCord founded IRONGATE after 20+ years in IT risk management, audit, and compliance — most recently leading targeted risk assessment and compliance efforts at Oracle. Before that, he managed enterprise risk programs, control testing, audit facilitation, and remediation tracking for Fortune 500 companies, state agencies, and federal programs.
He's operated on both sides of the audit table: preparing organizations for external assessments and conducting risk evaluations as the assessor. That dual perspective shapes every IRONGATE engagement.
The pattern he kept seeing was the same. Companies paying for expensive assessments that ended up in a drawer. Consultants delivering generic advice that ignored limited budgets and competing priorities. Recommendations that checked a box but didn't move the needle.
IRONGATE takes a different approach. Clear deliverables. Practical recommendations. Tools and outputs you can put to work the same week you receive them. Every engagement is informed by what Charles has learned doing this work firsthand — not theory recycled from a Google search.
The free tools exist for a reason. They lower the barrier for smaller organizations, give the security community something useful, and let prospective clients see how IRONGATE thinks before spending a dollar.
Charles holds CISA and CCSK certifications and has led compliance programs across technology, financial services, defense contracting, and critical infrastructure.
Core areas of expertise:
Charles also maintains a library of open-source security assessment tools used by the GRC community, and publishes professional-grade compliance toolkits built from practitioner experience — not templates scraped from the internet.
Philosophy
We're not just advising from the outside — we implement these frameworks every day. We know what actually works in the real world.
No 100-page reports that gather dust. You get clear, usable outputs: workbooks, roadmaps, policies, and presentations you can use immediately.
Know exactly what you're paying before you commit. No surprise invoices, no endless billable hours, no scope creep.
Clear communication in plain English. Whether you're talking to engineers or the board, you'll understand what's happening and why.
Credentials
Certified Information Systems Auditor (ISACA) — IT audit, risk assessment, and assurance across enterprise environments.
Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (Cloud Security Alliance) — cloud architecture, governance, and security controls.
Deep expertise in the Cybersecurity Framework, from assessment through implementation and continuous improvement.
Extensive experience preparing organizations for SOC 2 Type I and Type II audits across all trust services criteria.
Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification expertise for defense contractors — Levels 1 through 3.
Information security management system implementation and audit preparation for international certification.
Federal cloud authorization process — from readiness assessment through continuous monitoring.
Have a governance, risk, or compliance challenge? Let's talk about how we can help.