BEST PRACTICES FOR SUCCESS
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The Next Level SECOND-GENERATION CRYPTOGRAPHER AND CYBER SECURITY SPECIALIST
Darnell Washington. As the founder and CEO of Symrna, Georgia’s SecureX- perts Inc., an information security risk management company, the firm gets paid for being a little paranoid on behalf of his clients.
A It is money well-earned. In 2012
the Georgia Tech Information Security Center projects that hackers will tar- get mobile devices, cloud computing, personal information and search engines. Last September, Symantec Corp. reported that global cybercrime costs $114 billion annually.. Washington, 47, is a second-gener- ation cryptographer. In 1962, his father, a Morgan State College grad, was one of the first mathematicians recruited by the National Security Agency from a his- torically black school. He spent 30-plus years there, became a senior executive and represented the agency at the Depart- ment of Defense.
His youngest son, Darnell Jr., began honing his computer programming skills while a high school student in predom- inantly-white Laurel, Maryland. Con- sequently, he desired a different college experience and matriculated at Howard University. While there, Washington majored in information systems manage- ment, and held a student internship at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Phys- ics Laboratory.
More than 20 years before Malcolm
Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success, which described how individu- als gained expertise through 10,000 hours of concentrated immersion in a subject, Washington found his calling: software development. His first computer was a Commodore 64 and he wrote his first program in CPM language. “I could ma-
www.blackengineer.com
Darnell Washington Founder and CEO SecureXperts Inc.
nipulate and control hardware and soft- ware devices to function as I intended,” he says.
During the first 15 years of his cyber
security career, Washington saw how vi- ruses, malware and information loss due to manipulated systems hurt corporations and reduced income. Then he decided how to use his experience and savvy to thwart hackers and other digital vandals. In 2001, prior to the 9-11 attacks,
Washington founded SecureXperts. His earned his initial capital working as a contract instructor conducting computer forensics and internet investigations, and worked on his business model. The result was the creation of a one- stop shop for clients to meet all of their information technology and physical security needs. He did it by assembling a team of multidisciplinary security pros with business continuity, disaster recovery, computer forensics, physical asset protection and information security assessment experience.
Securexperts has 22 full-time employees and 80 contractors on call. Projected revenue for 2011 is just under $5 million, plus a chance for more year- end money from special assignments. The closely-held firm, with federal
nticipating national security and cyber threats is both business, and a family legacy, for
minority-business designation, has never been an 8(a) company and Washington is majority shareholder.
And there is room for new hires. But
to meet Washington’s approval, one must possess powerful math skills to develop fundamental analytical and problem-solv- ing skills, and have a constantly-evolving proficiency in fixed and portable comput- ing devices. Washington says a surprise in the
firm’s early years was the positive recep- tion that the sector gave SecureXperts’ first product. Some federal officials, he contends, hailed “TelePort Vision” as the best integration of ultra-mobile and remote systems they had seen. Since then the Maryland native’s greatest professional accomplishment has been developing the patent, filed earlier this year, for a secure video encryption technology with law enforcement and military applications. Washington says that customers want to embed it in their systems, and set up licensing agree- ments. The system’s attraction is that it is a software innovation that goes into surveillance hardware and can be used in many areas.
SecureXpert clients include banks, healthcare, energy and education compa- nies under strict confidentiality agree- ments, which will not allow much detail, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ((DHS) Federal Protective Service. Under the DHS contract, Secur- eXperts has provided instruction and de- signed curriculum for several programs. These include the joint terrorism task force, cybercrime/internet investigations, operational security for public and state local agencies, counterterrorism, physical security protection training. SecureXperts also handles an array of risk assessment, identity management, and information security projects for the DHS itself. Washington says that Homeland Se-
USBE&IT I WINTER 2011 45 by Frank McCoy
fmccoy@ccgmag.com
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