A Little Unexpected Goodness

Kenton Veeder (President)

 

 

 

I would like to tell you all a little story. A few years ago, my company, Senseeker Engineering, realized we had to up our IT infrastructure game and fully comply with NIST 800-171, the dreaded "Cyber Clause." This Cyber Security standard ensures information is protected, especially US Government controlled unclassified information. This was a huge financial and time burden on a small business and I was quite grumpy about it.

Over that next year and a half, we spent a great deal of cash building a plan, hiring experts and buying equipment to build this secure system that would expand into the future as we grew. Today we have spent well over a couple hundred grand filling out our infrastructure for good cyber and physical access hygiene. This is a drop in the bucket for a large corporation, but quite an expenditure for a 20-person company (more like 12 people at the time we started).

Then COVID-19 hit and California Governor Newsom issued the stay-at-home order. While Senseeker is part of the DoD's Critical Infrastructure for National Security and exempt from shutting down, we are determined to comply with our Governor to the best of our ability because it is the right thing to do.

The news is full of failure and negativity, but my team were fully up and running and mostly working from home overnight. Other than a few minor hiccups like needing more VPN licenses and a couple system adjustments, all communications and data systems are performing well. We are backed up with data in triplicate stored in secure locations, have three independent and redundant communications systems the team is actively using and the company is generally rolling forward without issue.

It is really not often you can say this as an entrepreneur and business owner, but I'm glad the government forced us to build this system to comply with their DFARS clause, and I appreciate the team of IT experts who helped us reach this point. COVID-19 may have slowed us a little, but at least this little piece of the economy is still rolling. Keep safe, keep focused everyone.

 

About Senseeker Engineering

Senseeker is a wholly US owned transducer IC semiconductor company that specializes in the design of stateof-the-art digital imaging sensors and readout integrated circuits for hybrid infrared image sensing arrays. Senseeker's products and IP enable designers to produce world class infrared image sensing solutions. Read more at https://www.senseeker.com.

 

Media contact: info@senseeker.com | 1 (805) 617-0337

 

Insight # IS-20200326-01