Fortress Information Security LLC was chosen as one of Orlando Business Journal's 2022 Fire Awards honorees, who were featured in OBJ's April 29-May 5, 2022, weekly print edition.
The Orlando-based cybersecurity company — which specializes in protecting supply chains and critical infrastructure, namely for utility organizations and Department of Defense clients — in 2021 landed on the Inc. 5000 list of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies for the first time.
Here's more from Fortress Information Security co-founder and Executive Chairman Peter Kassabov:
Describe your company in three sentences or less: We provide purpose-fit solutions that reveal a holistic view of cyber risk throughout the entire IT and OT ecosystem of critical infrastructure and its extended supply chain. Fortress provides a total risk mitigation solution for mission-critical supply chains including services for supplier risk management, product security, risk management, file integrity, continuous monitoring and remediation to support an overall zero trust security model. Fortress has collaborated with several of America’s largest power companies to secure products used by more than 40% of the U.S. power grid.
What was your company’s biggest accomplishment of 2021? Our year-over-year growth was a very big accomplishment considering the challenges with the war for top talent. We doubled our entire workforce in 2021 and grew by 101% year over year.
How did you get it done? We focused on evaluating the overall talent market during the Covid era and were able to apply agile strategies to create a workplace that suits the workforce but also drives performance which aligns with our overall business strategy. Employees, today more than ever, want to join an organization with a purpose-driven culture, one that will provide an environment to help employees grow both personally and professionally. We implemented a robust learning and development program that provides our employees with a library of over 700,000 learning modules. The library not only provides technical training, but also offers tens of thousands of courses on work/life balance, mental health and well-being, purpose-culture, productivity and management training.
How does your company stay innovative? Fortress has differentiated itself from other cybersecurity companies by creating “moldable” solutions that can adapt to the needs of a customer or an industry. Also, our team members listen. Last year, Fortress formed the Asset to Vendor (A2V) Governance Committee, bringing together co-founders of Fortress’s A2V subsidiary (American Electric Power and Southern Company) with other utility companies and their vendors for candid conversations about challenges facing the industry and solutions that work for all involved.
What strategies have you implemented to recruit and/or retain talent in a competitive labor market? From a recruiting perspective, we strongly believe in a diverse workforce and made hiring decisions based not only on skills and culture fit, but also a candidate’s overall passion to learn and grow professionally. We primarily focus on hiring top talent in the Orlando area; however, we are in a very competitive market and have to implement recruitment strategies around business needs which require a portion of our openings to be available in a remote capacity. We have the tools to develop and upskill talent and we prioritized recruiting passionate candidates who wanted to grow in their careers. Retention was a top priority over the last year, and we ensured that our compensation and benefits packages aligned with the national marketplace, provided opportunities for cross-functional training and advancement, while prioritizing our purpose-driven culture.
What is the biggest challenge facing your industry? The work we do every day is a challenge. We try to stay ahead by constantly innovating our suite of vendor and product risk solutions, working consistently to build upon what we’ve already created and having a forward-thinking strategy on what threats we can expect in the future. Securing critical infrastructure from constant global supply chain threats isn’t easy, and we want to make sure we are keen on what possible threats are to come.
What is your company’s top goal for 2022? We have considerable growth ahead of us in 2022 and aim, yet again, at doubling our workforce to support our mission in keeping our nation’s most critical infrastructure safe.
In the past year, what progress have you seen in the growth of Central Florida’s entrepreneurial and tech ecosystems? It has been truly amazing to witness that growth. Orlando’s academic institutions have provided the talent capabilities that allow growing startups to be successful. The availability of these resources fuels the growth of expansion into our local community, providing highly compensated opportunities for talent while boosting our local economy.
What is the local technology and innovation sector’s biggest obstacle to more growth? The local sector needs more and more talent, and the biggest obstacle is supplying that talent to meet the demand of growth.
Are you hiring now? If so, how many positions and in what time frame? Yes, we are hiring aggressively across all business units and functions. We currently have over 40 open positions that we are hiring for immediately. Within the next month, we anticipate that number to double, if not triple. It is a very exciting time to work at Fortress and we always are looking for talented individuals to join our team.
Fortress Information Security LLC
- Top executives: CEO and co-founder Alex Santos, Executive Chairman and co-founder Peter Kassabov, COO Betsy Soehren Jones and People and Culture Vice President Bart Gasiorowski
- Year founded: 2015
- Capital raised since founding: $137 million
- Employees in Central Florida: 127
- Employees companywide: 218
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