FULTON, Md. (AP) \u2014 With a newly minted PhD in \u201cpure math\u201d in 2004 (it was actually a dual degree in math and machine learning), Ellison Anne Williams saw her work going in one of three directions: the National Security Agency, IBM or academic research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She chose classified government intelligence work and spent the formative years of her career laboring away in secret, immersed in the agency\u2019s mission. She climbed the ranks to become a senior technologist at the agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the urge to be her own boss never went away. So last year, after 12 years at the NSA, she left to start her own cybersecurity company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She didn\u2019t have to go far. She and about a dozen agency colleagues now work out of an office in Maple Lawn, a young community south of Columbia, Md., in Fulton. It\u2019s just a few minutes\u2019 drive from the NSA\u2019s campus at Fort Meade. The small company, called Enveil, has more than a dozen corporate customers and has raised $5 million from investors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Williams likes the start-up grind, but it has required a change in mind-set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s what I always wanted to do, but that doesn\u2019t mean there wasn\u2019t a cultural learning period … a sort of detox,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Williams is one of a number of longtime NSA-ers who have been leaving Fort Meade for the private sector. Many are tempted by the opportunity to start a business \u2014 or pull down a big paycheck working for a major bank or other institution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In recent years, high-profile hacks have repeatedly embarrassed brand-name businesses, nudging deep-pocketed corporations to spend more on data security. Market research firm Gartner pegs the worldwide information security market at close to $100 billion and growing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Investors are taking notice, leading to a doubling of the number of venture-capital deals going to Washington-area cybersecurity start-ups. Media and data giant Thomson Reuters, insurance firm USAA and Bloomberg\u2019s investment arm recently invested $4 million to help Enveil grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Williams owes much of her success to a rare moment of openness at the NSA: Through an official technology transfer program, she was able to declassify some of her work and commercialize it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company sells an encryption service designed to follow data wherever it goes. Her team at the NSA leveraged decades of research into novel ways of encrypting information and found new ways to apply it to large organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She got some help from a private start-up incubator called Datatribe, which writes founders checks in the range of $1.5 million, typically in exchange for a 25 percent ownership stake in the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Datatribe was founded by Mike Janke, a former member of the Seal Team 6 elite counterterrorism unit who later founded an encryption firm called Silent Circle. Janke said part of the job of the incubator is to keep government technologists from leaving the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJPMorgan and Morgan Stanley will take more people (from the NSA) in a month than we do in a year,\u201d Janke said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The incubator benefits from added financial firepower from Silicon Valley. At the direction of Bob Ackerman, who earned the moniker \u201ccybersecurity\u2019s money man\u201d for investing in the industry in its early days, Silicon Valley venture fund Allegis Capital recently set up a Maryland-based office to be closer to Datatribe and the NSA. To help in the effort, it added Dave DeWalt, the former board chairman of California cybersecurity giant FireEye, as a board member.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DeWalt says he\u2019s looking at Maryland-based companies because he wants to unlock the NSA\u2019s trove of talent and know-how for the private sector. He says \u201coffensive\u201d cybersecurity expertise \u2014 as in going on the offense to hack someone else \u2014 is exceedingly rare in Silicon Valley but plentiful in Maryland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt started 10 years ago, maybe less, when governments began to attack commercial companies,\u201d he said. At one point \u201cwe responded to 5,532 American breaches\u201d while he worked in the private sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ackerman said he\u2019s not trying to poach people from the NSA or persuade anyone to abandon public service. What he does want to do is find people who are already thinking about leaving and give them an opportunity to start a business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere are a lot of people who, for their own reasons, get to a point in time where they\u2019re passionate about what they do, they\u2019re passionate about beating the bad guys, but they want to do it in a different environment,\u201d Ackerman said. \u201cWe\u2019re there to support them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Much of the incubator\u2019s credibility comes from an early success that set a high bar for founders such as Williams. One of Datatribe\u2019s first companies was a start-up called Onyara which, like Enveil, was built around NSA technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was founded by Steven and Joe Witt, brothers who respectively worked in the CIA and NSA. In family discussions that started in 2010 and fizzled out twice under \u201cdo we really want to do this\u201d anxiety, the brothers left their respective intelligence agencies in March 2015, taking a handful of close associates with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Onyara\u2019s core product, called Apache Nifi, is designed to rapidly analyze the millions of rapid-fire signals that come off connected devices. The brothers declined to say what the agency was using it for, but the software was freely released outside the agency in the fall of 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Corporations use the product to manage the signals coming off things like oil rigs, mobile phones and other industrial equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Onyara signed its first customer after just four days and sold the company five months later for $40 million. Now the group operates as a Baltimore-based unit of a California-based security firm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The way the Witt brothers see it, they never really left public service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The people leaving intelligence agencies \u201cdon\u2019t view it as they\u2019ve left CIA or NSA and that\u2019s it,\u201d Steven Witt said. \u201cThey could go back into the public sector or run for public office.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For her part, Williams believes the emerging ecosystem of young companies and investors will be key to the success of start-ups like hers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt takes somebody that understands the power of technology in a government setting to take a risk on something like this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In recent years, high-profile hacks have repeatedly embarrassed brand-name businesses, nudging deep-pocketed corporations to spend more on data security. Investors are taking notice, leading to a doubling of the number of venture-capital deals going to Washington-area cybersecurity start-ups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":27791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"8":{"categories":["career","management","newsletters","daily-brief","home"],"primary_category":"career"}}},"categories":[106,29,32],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1082],"class_list":["post-21084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"MC7LUWEZUVBTXJ5JRQ4LTCXU3U","arc_canonical_url":"\/workforce\/career\/2017\/11\/14\/nsa-veterans-catch-the-eye-of-silicon-valley-investors\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n