October is Cyber Security Awareness Month and the Greater Baltimore Region has reason to celebrate! The Maryland/DC market is one of the fastest growing cyber security industries in the world due to its proximity to the NSA and military bases. Greater Baltimore ranks 9th for concentration of cyber security professionals, while the Baltimore-Washington corridor ranks 2nd for concentration of information technology professionals.
More cyber security jobs are available in Maryland than anywhere else. Seven Maryland colleges and universities are recognized as NSA Information Assurance & Cyber Defense Centers of Excellence, and more than 88,000 Central Maryland residents hold cyber security-related post-secondary degrees.
At the end of this month cyber industry leaders will come together for two days of networking and learning at the Cyber Maryland Conference October 28-29.
We recently sat down with one of the region’s newest companies, FourV.
EAGB: Tell us about your company
FV: FourV is a lean, agile and disruptive tech startup with a rich history, stemming from its connection to SRC, Inc., a not-for-profit research and development company with more than 55 years of experience in defense, environment and intelligence. Established by a group of subject matter experts, FourV is able to tackle the most challenging big data issues. Our vision is to give languishing business data a new voice by exposing hidden business value and risk, and making it easily digestible to executives while still being actionable to managers.
These solutions relieve companies of the burden of synthesizing information to allow for new waves of innovation and optimization. Our cloud-based platform, the GreySpark Reasoning Engine, uses a patented machine learning data correlation and risk scoring system to synthesize knowledge about business risk out of historical data. These insights are then applied to streaming data in order to score current operations in real-time, giving business managers the information needed to manage risk; removing much of the guess-work inherent in managing the various types of risk a business faces.
We see huge potential in helping companies put their own data to work. Turning raw historical data into information and knowledge about business outcomes, value and risk is an incredibly cumbersome process when done manually, which is why few companies do it. Beyond analysis of historical data, we enable the same analytics on real-time fast streaming data, allowing businesses to manage risk and operations with near real-time performance feedback.
EAGB: What types of companies are you looking to work with?
FV: We have already identified a handful of different business sectors where the capabilities of our products are starting to make a big difference: cyber security risk and related cyber insurance underwriting risk are at the top of the list. Interest is high among business leaders in these fields, and we are starting several pilot programs. Ultimately, we will be able to extend our analytics to risk in whatever form it exists, including operational, strategic, compliance, reputational, and financial business risk.
EAGB: Why Maryland?
FV: Maryland is a hub of technological development. We have access to endless resources for growth and the proximity to DC and Virginia cannot be matched. Maryland is home to a wide range of companies of varying industries and revenue levels and we have been able to tap the business community for their feedback on our value proposition during our market research phase.
In addition, organizations like Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore, TEDCO, CyberMaryland and the Federal Business Council provide strong support and bring together companies of varying sizes and stages in order to increase the chance of success. We have the opportunity to not only benefit from these services, but also give back to companies that are also getting started.
Finally, since three out of four of our initial stakeholders have made Maryland their home for the past decade+ we couldn’t see a better option!
EAGB: Do you anticipate growing in this region in the coming year?
FV: Yes, absolutely. We are working to quickly (and thoughtfully) staff up and narrow our market focus. We anticipate several pilot tests this year and early next year, and our commercial launch next summer.
