About Cary
About Cary
Cary Mathews is a family man, the husband of a very supportive wife, Katie, and father of four beautiful daughters. He is a long-term resident of St. Clair County, having moved to Fairview Heights in high school when his father was assigned to Scott AFB. After graduating from Abilene Christian University (ACU), he married Katie and they lived in Belleville for several years. His career as a computer security analyst provided him opportunities to work with Army, Air Force, and Marine units both within the United States and overseas. In 2017, they bought a house in O’Fallon and have lived here since. He is currently employed with a military contractor at Scott AFB.
Education
Cary graduated from ACU with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. Throughout his career, he has earned multiple industry certifications such as the Security+, the CISSP, GIAC Penetration Tester, and GIAC Incident Handler. With increasing collection of digital data and reliance on computer systems to run businesses and government, Cary is continuing to deepen his understanding and skills in protecting this data from compromise by pursuing a Master of Science in Cybersecurity through the Georgia Institute of Technology. Cary hopes to be an advocate for improving the use of technology within the government as well as strengthening the privacy rights of individuals in relation to their personal data and devices.
Career
Cary's career has been one of public service. Since a medical complication ended his goal of attending the Naval Academy, he has applied his skills and passion for computer security to national defense. He has worked with Army, Air Force, and Marine personnel as well as defense and intelligence agencies, doing his part to ensure mission critical data was available to the servicemen and women on the front while denying access to unauthorized users. In his current role, Cary continues to work with a unit at Scott AFB tasked with providing incident response support to agencies with non-existant or nascent network defense capabilities. Managing an incident response event requires clear thinking when continually receiving bad news. As a county board member, Cary will apply his experience of analysis of critical network infrastructure and data to analysis of county infrastructure: ordinances, offices, and services provided to residents.
Values
Cary has been a life-long conservative, believing that the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution formalized the understanding that the Person, not the Government, was the proper foundation for a nation. Persons, united together as the People, voluntarily relinquished some rights and powers to the government, with the expectation that the government would protect the unalienable (i.e. non-revocable) rights of the People and the Person, and be an unbiased mediator between people when those rights came into conflict. People should be able to work or start a business with minimal interference from the government. Taxes should be levied for necessary purposes and always with input from those who will be paying them. Considering all people as created equal under the law, treating them equally —without regard to external characteristics— but only to their behavior or decisions. These are Cary's values and the values of most Americans.
EDIT 2022-08-03: fixed spelling errors.