The National Security Agency lifted its veil of secrecy Wednesday evening to host a crowd of 400 business and community leaders at Fort George G. Meade.
The code-cracking arm of the Pentagon held the rare event to forge closer ties with Greater Baltimore.
NSA Director Keith B. Alexander told the crowd his agency’s reliance on the region’s businesses community will become even greater in the coming years as the threats facing the nation’s electronic systems and data expand in number and severity.
“We can’t say how big it is without getting into classified information, but it is huge,” Alexander said. “We can’t do it without industry support.”
Alexander was appointed head of U.S. Cyber Command in May and has been working since then to assemble the framework for the umbrella organization of military cyber warriors.
The new agency should be fully operational by October with a staff of about 1,100, Alexander said. Most of those employees already work at Fort Meade. But that is just the start, and Cyber Command will be reliant on a broad range of private businesses, Alexander said.
That dependence prompted the NSA to host Wednesday’s NSA State and Local Partner Reception. The two-hour networking event was coordinated with the Fort Meade Alliance, an organization of business and community groups that support the Anne Arundel military base. Alexander, appearing in military fatigue, spoke briefly to the crowd but then left to attend another meeting.
Many of the companies represented at the event already do business in some capacity with the agency, including firms like information technology firm Mitre and real estate developer Corporate Office Properties Trust.
But for many more, the event was the first time attendees got the chance to take the “NSA Employees Only” exit off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway beyond the restricted gates of the agency’s headquarters.
That’s something S. Richard Peltz Jr. has always wanted to do. Peltz, director of marketing at information technology staffing firm PKW Associates Inc., was hoping to learn more about the agency and maybe help it recruit the employees it needs to fight cyber terrorism.
Peltz provides staffing for some government agencies, including the Social Security Administration, but he said wants to expand the firm’s reach to the NSA.
In the battered recession, many of the event’s attendees said the federal government is one of the few bright prospects to grow their businesses. Frank. Strategic Marketing President Marjorie Valin said she has been trying to land contracts for her Columbia marketing firm for about three years.
“Trying to navigate the federal agency system is a labyrinth,” Valin said in an interview.
She is registered to do business with the U.S. General Services Administration but has not been able to get work through that yet. Her firm, with eight full-time employees, does not have the resources to wade through the complicated bidding process, she said.
That is what was so surprising about the NSA event, she said. With all the mystery and intrigue surrounding the agency, she was refreshed by its openness.
“I feel it’s fascinating that they actually are trying to remove obstacles in small businesses face,” she said. Up until Wednesday, she figured the agency was off-limits to a firm as small as hers. “I thought that I would never see the inside of this building. It’s very secure, very hard to penetrate. Really, it was just off my radar.”
Despite its reputation, NSA community relations representative Catherine “Kay” Hill said the agency tries to maintain its ties with the community. Its employees live and work in the Fort Meade area, and it seeks to foster relationships with groups including the Fort Meade Alliance. With U.S. Cyber Command, Hill said that role will become even more important.
Last year, the agency awarded more than $2.5 billion in contracts to Maryland businesses for everything from dog food and landscaping to Top Secret IT work.
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