ThreatLocker Inc. has been in its current spot only since November 2022, but already is running out of space, said CEO Danny Jenkins. That’s because the Maitland-headquartered cybersecurity firm hires 40 to 50 employees per month, with no plans to slow down.
“We have about 480 employees now, and 20 people started today,” said Jenkins. “I haven’t met them yet.”
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ThreatLocker, founded in 2017, has national and international clients, and the steady stream of new hires is needed to meet demand.
Here, Orlando Business Journal spoke with Jenkins about his short-term and long-term plans to spread out and more:
How many employees do you intend to add?
Over the next two years, probably another 1,200 likely will join the team in a range of positions. We’ll need analysts, engineers, developers, sales and marketing staff and customer service. I'd expect to add 400 to 500 over the next 12 months and 700-plus the year after that. It seems hard to believe that I had 50 people a few years ago.
Do you have enough office space for all the new employees coming on?
When we moved into Maitland Summit [office park] a year and a half ago, there was so much space and so many empty desks, but then it started to get crowded. We have 45,000 square feet now, but it's not enough. We initially thought we could stay in Maitland Summit, taking more office space here, but when we made an offer, they told us it already is taken. We’ve been trying to negotiate with them to give it to us instead, but in the last week we learned for certain it won’t happen.
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What’s your Plan B?
We're working with Atkins Commercial Real Estate. They found us our last two offices, too. We need 25,000 more square feet right away, but we're trying to find a building that has at least 100,000 square feet in it, maybe more, or a campus-type situation. That will hold us over for a couple of years That will give us time to build or maybe in 2 ½ years move into [the Orlando Magic's future] Westcourt [development in downtown]. Westcourt has options for offices with 200,000 to 300,000 square feet, so that's a real consideration for us.
Is your growth due to the fact that more companies are starting to understand how important cybersecurity is?
I think it's a combination. More companies are trying to understand cybersecurity. But the bigger thing is we’ve got a tangible way to stop the problem, as opposed to just magic wishes, which is what was sold before, snake oil-type stuff. What we’re selling is working.
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Have you had incidents at ThreatLocker when your methods did not work?
We've had incidents where clients sometimes don't deploy properly or don't completely deploy, and it hasn't worked. But the idea of zero trust is that it blocks everything by default. So, now it's up to the client to decide what they want to allow in.
What is zero trust?
Zero-trust security means whether they're inside or outside the network, whatever job title they hold, everyone must be verified before accessing resources.
About Westcourt
JMA Ventures LLC and Houston-based development and venue advisory firm Machete Group are working in a joint venture with the Orlando Magic on a $500 million, 900,000-square-foot, mixed-use downtown project called Westcourt on 8.5 vacant acres to the north of the Kia Center.
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