Local Home, Global Growth

Moving nearly 250 employees into the new 1144 Fifteenth tower in downtown Denver – the city’s newest and fourth tallest building – is a surreal experience. The first time I set foot in Optiv’s new global headquarters, I couldn’t help but marvel at how far this company has come since its beginnings.

Back then, I, along with three of my friends and colleagues, realized the cyber security market was highly fragmented. Organizations had to work with multiple niche firms to build an effective security program. We saw an opportunity to create one firm that clients could lean on for most of their needs. And so, our journey began in what I call a “Class D” office space in lower downtown. We only cared about treating our employees right and simplifying security for our clients – two tenets that proved to be sound.

Today, Optiv is the largest and most respected security solutions integrator in North America. We have 36 U.S. offices and 1,800 employees across North America, Europe and India. We have served 7,500 clients in 76 countries over the last three years. And we work with 67 percent of the Fortune 500 and 75 percent of the Fortune 100.

As we focus now on becoming the largest and most respected security solutions integrator in the world, our new global headquarters is symbolic of this new chapter in our company’s story.

In fact, there couldn’t be a better time for us to embark on this next phase of our journey. Over the years, adversaries have evolved into highly sophisticated organized criminals and nation states. Regulations have drastically increased. And, the “outside-in” approach to cyber security, which focuses on identifying specific threats and then reacting with technology procurement, has left many enterprises with bloated and expensive infrastructures that are extremely difficult to manage, measure and maintain.

Optiv’s unique “inside-out” approach to cyber security is designed to help clients build sustainable risk-centric foundations for implementing proactive and measurable security programs. It starts with two core requirements of every enterprise – business strategy and risk mitigation – and builds outward from there with cyber security strategy, infrastructure rationalization, operations optimization and ongoing measurement.

We’ve come so far as a company over the past few decades, and I am beyond excited to see what we’re able to achieve in our new home and in this new era of cyber security.

Dan Burns is the CEO and co-founder of Optiv.