When you enter the new Cyber Experience Center in Boston’s Seaport District, you don’t need an access badge. A machine, erected on a pole next to the main staircase, will scan your face, compare the image to its database, and decide whether to let you in.
It’s a fitting metaphor for the new digs of Austin-based cybersecurity firm Forcepoint. The center is designed to focus on “human-centric cybersecurity,” says Richard Ford, the company’s chief scientist. The way he describes the 53K-sq. ft. space, it's an eight-figure investment for all its customers, which range from the US government to large independent companies. (Forcepoint itself stems from a partnership between Raytheon and Vista Equity Partners.)
“It’s about meeting the customer where they are on their journey, and talking to the customer about not what I want to tell them, but what they want to learn about,” Ford says.
The center is equipped with stylish conference rooms, touch screens taller than a person, and an “immersive-experience” presentation about the importance of cybersecurity. But it isn’t just a meeting place for current and prospective Forcepoint clients. Forcepoint will also employ data scientists, researchers, and cybersecurity experts to build and deliver its products. Plus, in addition to its role as Cyber Experience Center, the space will be Forcepoint’s first Global Center of Excellence for Behavioral Analytics, drawing on the company’s X-Labs research division to create tools and services based on human behavior.
All told, the facility will create more than 300 jobs over the next couple of years, according to a press release. Up to 100 of those will be in 2019. The Cyber Experience Center is Forcepoint’s first facility in the Boston area.
“We want to help retain the excellent talent Boston has—these great schools, top-of-the-line tech talent, who then run off to San Francisco,” Ford says, laughing. “Boston is also incredibly well-connected. If we have customers in Europe, it’s a lot easier to get to Boston than Austin. And we have a lot of customers up on the East Coast. But when we came across the space, it kind of sold itself.”
The new center, right next to the Thomson Reuters building, puts Forcepoint right in the heart of Fort Point, a part of the Seaport known for its startups. Ford isn’t alone in thinking of the local talent Forcepoint can tap into. At a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Tuesday, Gov. Charlie Baker referred to the universities, startups, and investors in Massachusetts that create an “ecosystem” of innovation. “We have a ton of intellectual capital,” Baker said. “We have growing resources in this space.” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who also spoke at the ceremony, quipped: “It’s not just the Bay State, but the Brain State!”
Forcepoint CEO Matt Moynahan is himself Boston-born and -educated.
Fun fact: The Cyber Experience Center also happens to be located just around the corner from a major filming location for The Departed—“Right here is where you go to the roof; that’s where Martin Sheen got pushed off,” Ford tells me.
“People like Boston. It’s got some personality,” Ford says. “Everyone’s been to New York. Boston’s got some character.”
Here are a few photos I took during my tour:
