Courtesy Reg Harnish
By Andrea Harwood Palmer
OrbitalFire, a managed security service provider headquartered in Queensbury, launched a new service platform in early June. It is designed to help small businesses.
“OrbitalFire provides cybersecurity solutions specially designed for small and medium-sized businesses, including regulatory compliance, risk management, assessment, training, security monitoring and other services that have traditionally been available only to enterprises,” according to CEO Reg Harnish.
“Cybersecurity is confusing for most businesses—they don’t know where to start. Our goal at OrbitalFire is to redefine cybersecurity for small businesses. Your small to medium business doesn’t look like Target, or Walmart, or Boeing. So you shouldn’t think about cybersecurity in the same way they do,” he said.
He said the company exists for “every small- and medium-sized business owner who has ignored cybersecurity, or who has felt neglected, or has done their best to invest and do the right things in cybersecurity and still felt alienated … We want to help them solve this problem in a way that scales with their business, is affordable and, from a best practice standpoint, delivers effective cybersecurity without treating you like you’re the Pentagon.”
Harnish is no stranger to the tech space. He is the founder of GreyCastle Security in Troy and continues to sit on its board of directors.
He recently launched Slingshot Cyberventures, a cybersecurity advisory service firm targeting early-stage cybersecurity companies. He has been doing startups since 1995 and has been through several initial public offerings (IPOs) and acquisitions. He is the former chief technology officer of the Autotask Corp.
Harnish partnered with Kimbal Musk, brother of Elon Musk’s—a noted engineer, industrial designer, technology entrepreneur and philanthropist—on internet venture FunkyTalk.com.
“Cybersecurity in general has become a highly visible, important undertaking for most businesses. Larger organizations have the benefit of more resources—people, time, energy, money—and small businesses have really suffered. Whether its technology or service providers, the industry has historically focused on medium to larger sized businesses because there is more margin and bigger contracts. Meanwhile, smaller businesses have gotten left behind,” said Harnish.
He said small businesses have distinct advantages in cybersecurity. They don’t have as much data, they tend to be less complex, have fewer business partners and often have a better general sense of where their data is stored.
“Security really relies on your ability to understand what kind of data you have, who has access to it, where it goes. Small businesses can do that. Large businesses can’t, because there’s just too much of it,” Harnish said.
“In our quest here, we want to take some of these implicit advantages that small businesses have, leverage those and start to redefine what makes sense for a small business to do from a security standpoint.”
“While some of this dialog has been going in the industry for some time, no one has really come up with a good solution for small managed practices. They’ve really been left behind. We’re going to take care of that,” he said.
OrbitalFire has been working in “stealth mode,” as Harnish referred to their pre-launch strategy. They have nearly 40 clients.
The company will partner with managed security service providers (MSSPs) and IT providers. StoredTech in Queensbury is the first MSSP partner from the region to come on board.
OrbitalFire will partner with other firms both locally and throughout the U.S. The firm has several other silent partners from various sub-sectors the tech services space, according to Harnish.
He anticipates close to $1 million in gross revenue during the first 12 months.
“We’ve got a good grounding here. We’re starting from a good point,” he said.
Though the company is currently in Queensbury, that could change in the future.
OrbitalFire can be reached at media@orbitalfire.com or at 1-800-ORB-FIRE. The website is www.orbitalfire.com.