Matthew Gilchrist
About Matthew Gilchrist
Matthew Gilchrist is a Firewall Analyst at Adapt Forward, where he has worked since 2020. He has a diverse background in customer service, coaching, and IT roles, with experience in troubleshooting network issues and managing firewall configurations.
Work at Adapt Forward
Matthew Gilchrist has been employed at Adapt Forward as a Firewall Analyst since 2020. In this role, he is responsible for troubleshooting failed connections by tracing and verifying routes, VLANs, ACLs, and firewall rulesets. He performs packet captures and analyzes the output using Wireshark. His work includes deploying, migrating, and upgrading Palo Alto firewalls for the Defense Health Agency, supporting over 140,000 employees and 9.6 million patients. He creates firewall policies based on NIST 800-53 and zero-trust concepts to ensure secure access to critical medical applications.
Previous Employment Experience
Before joining Adapt Forward, Matthew Gilchrist held various positions across different organizations. He worked at T-Mobile as a Customer Service Representative from 2014 to 2017. Prior to that, he served as a Wrestling Coach at North Canton City Schools from 2005 to 2007. He was also a Sales Supervisor at Best Buy from 2009 to 2014, and an IT Production Specialist at Mercedes-Benz USA for six months in 2019. Additionally, he worked as a server at Darden from 2007 to 2009.
Education and Certifications
Matthew Gilchrist studied at Kent State University at Stark, focusing on Education from 2005 to 2006. He later attended Trident Technical College, where he pursued A+ and networking certifications from 2013 to 2016. His educational background supports his technical skills in network management and firewall analysis.
Technical Skills and Responsibilities
In his role as a Firewall Analyst, Matthew Gilchrist configures interfaces, routes, VLANs, and ACLs on Palo Alto firewalls, Cisco ASAs, and Cisco routers and switches. He performs initial site build-outs for migrations from legacy equipment to new IP architectures. His responsibilities also include providing Tier 3 investigation and troubleshooting for Palo Alto firewalls within the Department of Defense WAN/LAN. He utilizes Splunk for searching historical traffic logs to verify network connectivity.
Project Management and Coordination
Matthew Gilchrist builds migration readiness reports to assess a site’s preparedness for migration efforts. He shares these reports with other teams and clients to facilitate coordination during migration processes. Additionally, he reviews proposed configurations to ensure accuracy and prevent network interruptions, and he manages remote firewalls using Panorama.