James Grant is president, CTO, developer and CBW (Chief Bottle Washer) of 8Signs. Most recently, he produced the 8Signs Firewall, also sold as VisNetic Firewall by Deerfield.com since February, 2002.

The 8Signs Firewall was designed to address the market void left by the discontinuation by McAfee.com of ConSeal PC Firewall, the hit firewall he developed while working at Signal 9 in Canada (which was acquired by McAfee.com in Feb. 2000). As planned, 8Signs Firewall is popular with companies protecting networks and servers who don't need the bells and whistles of a high-priced firewall.

Prior to 8Signs, James spent one year at McAfee.com following its acquisition of Signal 9 Solutions.

James Grant was Vice President of R&D for Signal 9 Solutions, a Canadian Internet startup. There, he wrote the company's Windows-based products:

• ConSeal PC, a VPN client,
• ConSeal PC Firewall, the first true personal firewall,
• ConSeal Private Desktop, application-based, easy-to-use personal firewall and
• ConSeal Private Links, a person-to-person VPN

Signal 9 was formed in August, 1996 and James was hired in Sept. 1996 and remained with the company until it was acquired in 2000.

From 1993-1996, James worked as a software developer and project manager for Seimac Ltd., a consulting company in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, specializing in Meteorology, Marine technology and Defense software. He wrote contract proposals, managed software projects, worked on contracts for all three company departments and was involved in developing the company's ISO 9001 certification.

In 1992-1993, James Grant worked briefly for Worthington Software, a venture capital-funded company specializing in fax-to-computer and computer-to-fax (I-Fax) technology. Prior to the Internet boom, Cris Worthington correctly identified the fax as an effective, inexpensive and simple way of entering information into a remote server. James developed software and helped identify new markets.

From 1990-1992, James worked for the Department of Geology at Queen's University (at Kingston, Canada) with a team developing micro-seismic monitoring equipment used in hard rock mines. Team members later built a successful company.

In 1990, James Grant completed a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering at Queen's University (Kingston, Canada). His thesis work was in the area of Optics, using Finite Element Analysis to model the behaviour of "leaky" waveguides, a problem with applications in optical circuitry.

James worked from 1986-1998 for Northern Telecom (now called Nortel Networks), where he was one of the first recipients of the Order of Excellence for Technical Achievement for successfully finding new sales opportunities for his department.

From 1985-1986, James worked one year as a Research Associate in the departments of Computing Science and Electrical Engineering at Queen's University at Kingston, Canada. Work was in the area of encryption and parallel computing.

James Grant received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Queen's University at Kingston in 1985, graduating with honours. He recommends Queen's highly as an excellent place of learning in a beautiful city.

Despite his career success, James considers himself the dummy of the family, having a big sister who earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics from M.I.T., a brother who always seemed to have more dollars, more sense and more dates, another sister who was a stellar violin player before graduating from law school and a little sister who earned a Ph.D. in Microbiology before getting an M.D. Ah well, the race isn't over yet ;-)

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