SD&I 2017 Fast50 No. 5: The Security and IT Unifier

GC&E Systems Group makes its debut in the SD&I Fast50 at No. 5, and the company is not standing still. Recognizing the rapidly growing role that IT plays for the typical enterprise security client, the company has positioned itself as the integrator that can unite the typically adversarial end-user departments.   

“We our heavily focused on increasing the size and expertise of our IT professionals in order to provide more diverse solutions and services and to meet growing customer demand,” says Dan O’Sullivan, CEO of the Norcross, Ga.-based company.

O’Sullivan says GC&E recognized from the outset that the dynamic growth and convergence in communications and IT across all markets worldwide would create a market for more efficient and economical infrastructure solutions. This vision drove GC&E to become a reseller and OEM partner for several leading-edge infrastructure products. The company offers turnkey and full lifecycle solutions, in addition to Engineering, Furnishing, Installation and Testing (EFIT) projects for both commercial and government clients.

Further, GC&E is planning to offer a new suite of integrated services to include remote monitoring, management and maintenance combined with the lifecycle management of system assets. “This comprehensive service will provide our customers with real-time visibility into system operations, performance trends and reliability, instant notifications of system and device issues or failures,” O’Sullivan says.

Customers will be able to request service or assessments remotely or to schedule a service call – all while being able to track overall health and the history of specific routine activities performed for each device.

In five years time, O’Sullivan predicts that “GC&E will be a drastically different company.” He sees the Internet of Things (IoT) becoming commonplace – ushering in an era of the true unification of electronic security systems and IT systems. “We will incorporate and integrate many systems under one operating umbrella,” he says.

This focus on the IT side of the security equation has propelled GC&E into the fifth spot in SD&I’s Fast50.

A Logical Progression

GC&E has come a long way from its 1999 start in Cumming, Ga., with just three employees. It grew and diversified its offerings and customer base to its current position on the Fast 50. “With the diverse mix of government and commercial customers present in the Atlanta metropolitan area, we were able to develop and cultivate a solid customer base consisting of a balanced mix of federal, state, and local government and commercial customers,” O’ Sullivan says.

This diversity helped balance and stabilize their finances in the early years, serving as the catalyst for initial growth. About 10 years ago, GC&E divided its business into two divisions: one focusing on federal government opportunities supporting information technology, information assurance, and telecommunications-related opportunities; the second focusing on electronic security solutions and services. The Federal Division focuses on longer-term contracts and provides the foundation to increase their focus in the Electronic Security Services (ESS) division.

From there, GC&E grew from a small company providing communication infrastructure services to state and local agencies into a world-class system integrator delivering integrated solutions for communications, IT, electronic security and managed services to government, municipal, and commercial clients, including the education and healthcare markets.

Most recently, GC&E acquired Shield IS, an information management/security consulting firm.

GC&E leadership is meticulous in its planning. “Each year, we assess the electronic security market and develop strategic growth and diversification goals and objectives for our business,” O’Sullivan explains.

This includes near, mid-term, and long-term objectives such as strategic account pursuits, entry into new vertical markets or geographical locations, investment hires, employee training initiatives, adding new manufacturing partners, and developing new capabilities and services such as electronic security health monitoring-as-a-service.

GC&E is one of the few firms in its market with the capability to provide full lifecycle electronic security system solutions and support services. “We have the ability to provide upfront strategic consulting, support security system investment strategies, and conduct vulnerability and risk assessments to ensure we are providing the right security solution to meet our customers’ business and operational security support requirements,” O’Sullivan says.

The FIRE Team

GC&E goes beyond developing continuity of operations plans by providing customers access to the services of a Fast Incident Response and Evaluation (FIRE) Team – which consists of personnel with the technical expertise and experience to quickly assess and restore critical voice, data, and video systems following a man-made or natural disaster.

The idea is to better support customers in the event of an emergency. The FIRE Team helps customers determine the scope of an incident, the cause, and risks to business continuity and functions. The team deploys with the appropriate equipment to conduct a rapid assessment of the situation and assist in essential service restoration efforts.

“The results of the assessment provide customers with a gap analysis and recommendations for immediate mitigation actions, prioritization for restoration and capabilities required to fully restore information technology, electronic security systems, and telecommunications systems including Cybersecurity related services,” O’Sullivan says.

Based on customer-approved recommendations from the FIRE Team, GC&E will deploy a Communications Infrastructure Restoration and Recovery (CIRR) Team. It is comprised of proficient, experienced and certified engineers, technicians, and equipment operators capable of rapid and full restoration of essential services and other priorities designated in the customer’s disaster recovery plan.

“In the case of cybersecurity incidents, the FIRE Team leverages the information assurance and cybersecurity capability (via recently acquired) Shield IS,” O’Sullivan says, noting that those experts assist the customer in any investigation to include data gathering, system log collection or augmenting forensic requirements.

Expertise Creates Obstacles

O’Sullivan sees a couple of major issues facing the industry. They are interrelated items that, if deployed properly and simultaneously, can create a major opportunity, he says. Those challenges are:

• successful integration of new system components and equipment into a customer’s heterogeneous network; and
• ensuring the company’s technical professionals have the experience, expertise, certifications, and system-specific training and understanding to successfully start a new system or integrate the new hardware and software into an existing system.

“With the constant evolution of technology, it is almost impossible to successfully do this without experiencing some level of technical issues,” O’Sullivan says.

 His approach is to address as many of the system integration variables as possible to minimize implementation risk. “We provide a team of qualified project managers and technical professionals who collectively have the necessary expertise, certifications and manufacturer-specific training needed to perform the work,” he explains. The goal is to test and engineer out as many potential performance issues as possible during the design phase. Next, they burn in all equipment, configure, then test the system on a VLAN before deploying the new equipment on a customer’s physical security network.”

The idea, he continues, is to have all the necessary resources – technical documents, lessons learned, troubleshooting guides, tier 2/3 support, etc. – readily available to quickly assess, troubleshoot and correct any issues.

Assembling a Team

“Don’t ever be afraid to invest in your most important company asset – your employees,” O’Sullivan advises.

Back in its formative years, GC&E recruited personnel from Information Technology and electronic security systems integrators. They also would look at Managed Service Providers (MSP) companies for recruits. That has changed. More recently, GC&E has been able to attract additional personnel solely from recommendations provided by its current employees.

“With the majority of our technical professionals recruited via employee referrals, we significantly improve the likelihood of recruiting strong, technically qualified personnel, who are proven performers and are more likely to quickly and positively acculturate into GC&E,” O’Sullivan says.

“Within our competitive industry, retaining a qualified workforce is imperative to business success,” he continues. “At GC&E, we recognize that our people are our number-one asset and serve as the foundation for our success. Our culture challenges our staff to evolve their technical skills, industry experience, and business know-how.

GC&E’s “One Team” culture promotes teamwork and collaboration. “Always work to recruit and retain the best talent available in your market,” O’Sullivan says. “Work to build a team of technical professionals who have a passion for the electronic security industry; who strive to constantly improve their technical and professional competencies and acumen; who want to ensure the work is done properly; and that their customers are 100-percent satisfied.”

Putting GC&E on the Map

GC&E has worked to enhance its brand, name recognition, and value proposition to customers, partners, and employees. The two-pronged approach includes digital marketing initiatives, as well as hosting it first “Converged Security Summit” – which was in early March at the Georgia Aquarium.

The idea is to give their clients something extra that is not a direct sales pitch – rather, something that offers ideas from industry experts and allows the customers to hobnob with one another, establish business relationships that help solve security problems while giving them a feeling of community.

The Summit is a one-day, comprehensive program that brings together experts in physical, electronic, and information security to discuss best-practice countermeasures to safeguarding IT infrastructure and information assets. It presents solutions for perimeter security, privacy and employee safety.

O’Sullivan says they were pleased with the attendance and feedback received. They had more than 200 IT, IA, and security professionals in attendance; 20 security and IT vendors; and three distinguished, industry-recognized leaders who provided their insights on the constantly evolving state of information and physical security.

The keynote speaker was Kenrick Bagnall, a detective constable for the Toronto Police Service who specializes in Computer Cyber Crime (C3) Intelligence Services, who spoke to attendees about cyber threats to critical infrastructure. Jim Crumbley, CEO of Risk Response Team, outlined the relationship between IT and security/public safety; and Moses Anderson, CTO of Shield IS, spoke on “The Community of Things.”

“The Summit was a great success and will be an annual event,” O’Sullivan promises.

As far as digital marketing, “we work to continuously update and refresh our website to reflect current and evolving service offerings,” O’Sullivan says. “We routinely schedule push-outs of company news, employee achievements, new or enhanced service offerings, and other newsworthy items through Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.”

This year, GC&E plans to expand its efforts to include short videos addressing current and evolving technological advancements, information security, information assurance, and breaking news from vendor partners. Among the hot topics are the IoT and other trends.

“To supplement our positioning on being a thought leader in the electronic security arena, we will publish and present whitepapers, annually host our Converged Security Summit (CSS), and present relevant thought pieces at security industry conferences,” O’Sullivan says.

Over the next five years, look for GC&E to open several offices across the U.S., where both their federal and security divisions have strong growth and diversification prospects.

Curt Harler is a security technology writer and regular contributor to SD&I magazine. Reach him at [email protected].