May 27, 2016 6:06:52 am

Northern Colorado Mercury 100: Women securely in the lead at SNS

By Jacob Fogg

Step aside, gentlemen. The ladies at Secure Network Systems LLC are here to show you how to do cybersecurity.

With an impressive client list including the State Department, Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Homeland Security and several branches of the military, it’s time to pay attention to their Dacono-based company.

In an industry dominated by men — women make up just 11 percent of the global cybersecurity workforce — chief executive Melani Hernoud and chief operating officer Betty Pierce are driving the pace car. Collectively, the co-founders have six patents, granted and pending, for logical and physical security devices and systems under their belts.

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Chief operating officer Betty Pierce of Dacono-based Secure Network Systems. Courtesy Secure Network Systems

In 1999, Melani recognized the need for increased security across diverse platforms and founded SNS. Her pre-9/11 insights recognized the importance of the convergence between physical and logical security systems. That tragedy cemented the critical need for this kind of oversight. SNS products came to the forefront of cybersecurity technology and have played an important role ever since.

SNS’ flagship product CRTISEC is a solution for logical and physical access control. Pierce explained it in terms that made the sophisticated technology easily understood by non-information technology professionals.

“In other words,” she said, “CRTISEC provides a high degree of assurance of knowing who is accessing what in the environment.”

Facilities such as transportation centers, utilities and other industries that need to carefully monitor who is accessing the physical plant as well as the organization’s network are able to monitor and control access through a single interface. CRTISEC facilitates real-time updates when changes, such as employee terminations or restricting access to specific computer systems or building areas, occur within the organization.

CRTISEC is part of a family of six cybersecurity products. With capabilities specific to the aviation and SCADA industries to products that track where a user has gone throughout an entire infrastructure to controlling onsite video cameras, SNS provides solutions that offers high-level security in physical and virtual environments alike. Additionally, the company has a menu of services ranging from cloud and infrastructure solution to disaster recovery and continuity of operations to secure software development and customization. With five full-time employees, the team is nimble and tight, finding just the right solutions to meet their clients’ needs.

Merc100_noco In the past two years, the company has seen growth of more than 457 percent. But it hasn’t been easy getting there. It took more than five years to ink its first government contract. SNS is a Small Business Administration-certified 8(a) business-development company as well as a General Services Administration-certified Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 Complete End-to-End Solution Provider. Pierce acknowledged how important it is for the company to hold these certifications. “If you want to play in certain markets,” she said, “you have to pony up or you’re not going to be successful.”

Today, the company’s focus is on large governmental and transportation organizations as opposed to the smaller, privately owned companies with which they started working almost 20 years ago. It’s all about putting SNS’ energies toward developing and solidifying the relationships that will enable even more growth and product development, Pierce said.

If the past two years are any indication of SNS’ future, those energies have been properly placed, indeed.