ROME — As a kid growing up, the only persons concerned with cybersecurity were science-fiction characters such as Captain Midnight and Dick Tracy. Today, reality has trumped science fiction as imaginary decoder rings and wristwatches have been replaced by real microchips and a world connected by the Internet. With the explosion of digital devices, we all live in cyberspace.

This interconnectivity has attracted a concomitant explosion in the volume of sophisticated electronic attacks, fraud, and espionage, which in turn, has spawned the rapid growth of the cybersecurity industry. In 1999, there was only one company in Washington, D.C. lobbying exclusively on data issues. U.S. Senate records show there were more than 500 companies registered to lobby on the issue in the first quarter of this year. Today, there are 165 schools in America educating undergraduate and graduate students to become cybersecurity professionals.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Defense allocated $23 billion over a five-year period to counter cyber threats to our national security. Merger-and-acquisition activity has intensified, and the deals-market is red hot in search of boutique security firms, some fetching upwards of $1 billion.

Experts who protected American security before 9/11 are now forming their own consulting firms to cash in on the demand. Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, two former cabinet chiefs, now include Fortune 500 companies among their customers. Gen. Keith Alexander, who directed the National Security Agency, set up shop just a few weeks after leaving his post.

Sparking the rapid growth of cybersecurity is the recognition by business, government, and consumers that the threat is real. Two years ago, Edward Snowden stole a trove of documents which have both embarrassed the U.S. government and exposed our national-security plans. His occasional release of additional documents keeps the issue front and center in the public’s mind.

The recent breach by hackers of credit-card information on file with America’s largest retailers has stunned the public and forced business to rethink its strategy against cyber attacks. Neiman Marcus experienced a sophisticated breach of credit-card data that occurred over a three-and-a-half month period: Cyber criminals took control of a vulnerable server that allowed them to bypass the point-of-sales security system. The company was in compliance with standards meant to protect transaction data. Hackers also stole 40 million credit-card numbers from Target, which has cost the company nearly $150 million to date.

Right place, right time
Assured Information Security, Inc. (AIS), headquartered in Rome, is well-positioned to take advantage of the demand for cybersecurity. “AIS is on the cutting edge of cyber-security technology,” says Charles K. Green, company president and CEO. “We are always developing new and innovative technologies, and our services are designed to assist customers in safeguarding their sensitive information, communications, infrastructure, and critical assets.

The company can address a wide spectrum of potential vulnerability points and assess and eliminate them, as well as protecting against emerging threats. Whether the concern is a secure operating environment for remote access, advanced debugging, reverse engineering, host-protection, access to multiple security domains, automated encryption or decryption, analysis of network pcap (packet capture) files, wireless security, or forensic services, AIS’s advanced engineering and computer-science departments have the ability to address and overcome technical challenges.”

AIS was incorporated by Charles Green and three other partners in 2001. The company leases a 46,000-square-foot headquarters building and currently occupies 31,000 square feet. The boutique cybersecurity firm has seven locations: Rome, Dayton, Baltimore, Portland, Denver, San Antonio, and Omaha. The employee count is 121, with 105 located in Central New York, and 24 additional positions are currently open. Annual sales are $20 to $25 million.

AIS is a “C” corporation with 14 stockholders. The building is owned by the Griffiss Local Development Corp. “Today, our customer base is 99 percent government,” states Barry McKinney, the company’s senior vice president and director of corporate development. “In light of sequestration, we are determined to diversify our revenue streams by pursuing more private-sector customers, including those in health care, insurance, legal, banking and finance, retail, and energy. Currently, we are focusing on small and mid-size businesses in Central New York.”

How does AIS separate itself from the competition? “Our bread and butter is R&D,” continues McKinney, “that’s what really distinguishes us from the competition. We have years of experience working on sophisticated projects for DoD (Department of Defense) and the Air Force Lab. This experience allows us to understand a problem, unlike the ‘button clickers’ who just push buttons to see what works.

“We have learned that one size does not fit all: each job has to be tailored to the customer’s needs. More than 100 members of the staff are engineers or scientists, and 50 percent hold advanced degrees or are pursuing them. Nearly all have security clearances. AIS has been awarded two patents, and we have another half-dozen pending. We’re not just capable of solving today’s problem; we’re thinking about generation-after-next concepts and capabilities. (A generation in cybersecurity is 18 months.)”

“What also separates AIS from the competition is the industry relationships we have built,” adds Steven J. Flint, the company’s COO. “We may compete against major companies such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop, and Raytheon, but we also team up with them on many projects. We call this friendly rivalry ‘competiamate.’ In addition, AIS has built strong collaborations with more than a dozen highly regarded universities. [Finally,] … we share our knowledge with the customers: It’s a transparent process.”

Finding and retaining employees can be a challenge for a business located in the Mohawk Valley. “Our goal is to make it work for a prospective hire,” Green asserts. “We offer competitive pay and performance bonuses plus a host of benefits, including profit-sharing, a 7 percent 401(k) contribution by the company with immediate employee vesting, a 100 percent education reimbursement, professional development, 100 percent health-care premium, and disability and life-insurance premiums.

“AIS has a casual working environment that promotes team collaboration and motivates employees to succeed both personally and professionally. Often we have to find a position for a trailing spouse, and our seven locations give us an advantage in finding the right opportunities … We work closely with a number of area colleges such as Clarkson [University], SUNY Binghamton, Buffalo, SUNYIT, and Utica College to recruit their graduates. We contract with professors to serve as consultants and encourage internships at the company both for undergraduates and graduates.”

AIS works with a number of area vendors for professional services: Oneida Savings Bank for financing; Bond, Schoeneck & King, PLLC for labor law; Heslin, Rothenberg, Farley & Mesiti P.C. (Albany) for intellectual-property issues; and Benefit Consulting Group, Inc. (Syracuse) for human resources.

Green has been a part of Rome’s cyber initiatives since 1997, when he joined the Air Force Research Laboratory as a contractor. He earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from SUNYIT. McKinney earned his bachelor’s degree from SUNY Buffalo and his Ph.D. from the University of Alabama. He is a systems-process-and-design analyst with a background in statistics. Prior to joining AIS, he served as the basic-research adviser to the AFRL/Information Directorate in Rome and also was assigned to the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in London, the European office of Aerospace Research and Development. Flint brings 37 years of defense-technology research to his position at AIS. He holds degrees in physics from SUNY Geneseo and in electrical engineering from the SUNY University at Buffalo.

Jobs in the green sector are growing across New York and across the nation, according to a recent survey report by Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) released on Aug. 28.

“We saw three major projects there in New York that created, combined, more than 600 jobs,” says Robert Keefe, executive director of E2, a Washington, D.C.–based nonpartisan group of business leaders, investors, and others who promote environmental policies.

One of those projects is San Mateo, Calif.–based Solar City’s announced $200 million acquisition of Silevo, a California–based solar-panel technology and manufacturing company. As part of the acquisition, Solar City plans to build a 1 gigawatt (GW) annual production capacity manufacturing facility near Buffalo that will add several hundred jobs to start and could eventually lead to 1,000 jobs, Keefe says.

While that is great news, Keefe says, “The real story in New York is the story to come.” He’s referring to New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) initiative.

REV is designed to help the state meet its goal of reducing its carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2030, he says. The three main ways to do that are to make current power plants more efficient, replace energy that currently comes from fossil fuel with energy from renewable sources, and to make buildings more efficient. All of those efforts, Keefe says, will create jobs and stimulate economic growth.

“REV is a great thing,” he says. “It’s the type of policy we think is going to lead to dramatic clean-energy job growth.”

E2 has been tracking green jobs since 2011, and it says that in the second quarter of 2014, more than 12,500 clean energy and transportation jobs were announced in 29 states.

“That’s double what it was the previous quarter,” Keefe notes.

E2’s “Clean Energy Works for Us: Second Quarter 2014 Report” noted a number of projects besides the Solar City project in Buffalo that helped contribute to the increase nationally. Omaha, Neb.–based Tenaska, an independent energy provider, recently closed a deal to build a solar-energy center in California, a project that is creating 800 new construction jobs. The Boston Housing Authority’s project to install public-housing water and energy retrofits across the city helped create 600 new jobs there.

The solar sector saw the most job growth during the quarter, with 22 total projects announced and five solar companies announcing hiring in the residential sector in New York as well as Arizona, California, and Massachusetts.

Other areas of growth include electric vehicles and wind farms, particularly offshore wind projects in Oregon, New Jersey, and Virginia, Keefe says.

“These aren’t the jobs of the future anymore,” he says. “These are the jobs of today and they are growing.”

Keefe says the green industry is growing and thriving for three main reasons. First, he contends, Americans want clean energy. Second, American innovation, in the form of products like electric cars, is driving growth. Finally, good policy, such as New York’s REV initiative, leads to good business.

E2 (www.e2.org) says its mission is to create a platform for business leaders to promote environmentally sustainable economic growth. The group’s members have been involved in financing, founding, or developing more than 1,700 companies that have created more than 570,000 jobs.

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