A ‘franchise-ish’ approach

Published April 27, 2017 by Joan Tupponce

TECHNOLOGY
GuidePoint Security, Herndon
guidepointsecurity.com

GuidePoint Security founders Michael Volk and Justin Morehouse credit the company’s rapid growth to its focus on customers’ needs in providing cybersecurity services. “We focus on what we do, and that’s security,” says Volk.

The Herndon-based cybersecurity solution provider has a “franchise-ish” operation with regional partners. “While the regions are responsible for their go-to-market strategies and approaches as well as some of the technical requirements, they also take advantage of our centralized teams around information assurance and managed services as well as traditional back-office support functions,” Volk says.

Customers are “never more than one step away from an actual owner, which allows for increased responsiveness and service in meeting our customer needs,” he adds.

GuidePoint recorded a revenue growth rate of 1,276 percent from 2012 to 2015, ending the final year with revenue of $111 million. That pace has continued.

“In 2016 we did roughly around $158 million, and this year we should be around $210 to $215 million,” Volk says.

Incorporated in 2011, the company has grown to 205 employees. “Well over 50 percent of our folks have a technical job function,” Morehouse says. “We have more depth and breadth in the concentration of engineering resources within the company than is typical with similar firms in our space.”

The company has a presence in 12 states. “Our two biggest concentrations of employees are Virginia and Florida,” Morehouse says, noting the company has two security operations centers, one in Herndon and the other in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Two years ago GuidePoint began offering managed services solutions under which it runs a customer’s security operations center or augments an existing security operations center. “That work is in high demand,” Volk says.

GuidePoint was created during the emerging era of cloud-based solutions, and everything the company does is securely cloud-based. “Our team can go into a brick-and-mortar office, or they telecommute and work remotely,” Volk says.

Roughly 30 percent of the company’s work involves the federal government. “The rest is tied to our commercial customers, everything from financial services and health care to insurance and manufacturing,” Morehouse says. “Right now, financial services is our largest sector.”

The market is limitless, Volk says. “Cybersecurity threats and attacks keep evolving and expanding as well as the complexity of the solutions required keep growing to meet these ever-changing threats. Everyone needs to be concerned about this.”