Josh is the founder, president and infrastructure engineer of Emerald Security. He has more than 25 years of experience in computer networking, systems administration, cloud architecture and web development, and he designs the networks, cloud environments and camera and wireless systems we build for clients.
Where he started
Josh started learning about computers in seventh grade at Sunny Brae Middle School, and has been writing code ever since. His first jobs, though, were outdoors. In the early 2000s he worked as a laborer, sawyer and equipment operator on watershed restoration projects across Humboldt County: in the Arcata Community Forest, on the Mattole’s Good Roads, Clear Creeks program, building the Hammond Trail, and on road decommissioning and backcountry thinning crews in the King Range Conservation Area. Over the same years he studied computer networking at College of the Redwoods, earning an Associate of Science degree in Computer Information Systems, Networking.
IT at the end of a long road
In 2015 Josh joined the Mattole Salmon Group in Petrolia as its IT administrator and project coordinator, a role he held for eleven years. He looked after the organization’s infrastructure, cloud services, automation and data, and coordinated large-scale restoration projects at the same time. One of them, in the Mattole River estuary, used a heavy-lift helicopter to place almost 300 whole trees in and along the river to build fish habitat; Josh supervised the crew through every phase. You can read about that work in our Mattole Salmon Group case study.
Josh at his desk.
Before Emerald Security, Josh ran AllcomOne, the IT and web consultancy he started in 2001, offering networking and systems administration. Its early clients included Trinidad Union School, the Humboldt County Office of Education, Eel River Transportation, Arcata Scrap and Salvage and The Land Man.
Alongside the IT work, Josh served as IT manager for two winning county supervisor campaigns, in 2018 and 2022, looking after the voter data in a SQL database, the team’s intranet portal, the domain, DNS and the campaign website.
His security experience isn’t only digital, either. From 2000 to 2021 he worked as roaming security staff at Reggae on the River and Reggae Rising, keeping the public and the fire lanes safe, responding to medical and other emergencies, and stepping in without violence wherever possible.
Emerald Security
Josh started Emerald Security in July 2020, building on AllcomOne and adding video surveillance, access control and other security services. The aim was to give organizations the personal attention of a local technology partner with the depth of a much larger IT firm. His work runs from cloud architecture and security to the physical side of the business:
- Cloud and infrastructure: designing, implementing and managing highly available, scalable infrastructure for SaaS web applications, built to keep running through failures and to grow with demand. That covers Microsoft Azure environments, networking and security, Active Directory, backups and monitoring. One example is the tenant-to-tenant Azure clone we completed in under a week.
- Networks that reach: multi-WAN internet, point-to-point wireless and solar camera poles for properties where the cable and the power don’t go.
- Systems administration: Linux, macOS and Windows servers and workstations.
- Security and compliance: hands-on experience with ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO/IEC 42001, and helping organizations adopt AI responsibly.
He also writes most of the articles on our Insights page: what he learns in the field, written up for clients and fellow MSPs.
Certifications
Josh is an Apple Certified Support Professional and holds the Ubiquiti UFSP and URSCA certifications. Earlier in his career he also held Cisco CCNA and CompTIA A+ certifications.
Get in touch
If you’d like to talk with Josh about a project, book a call or send a message. For anything confidential, his PGP public key is published on this site.