As the head of cybersecurity at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Justin Fimlaid kept running into the same problems.
He was having trouble finding good talent, helpful technology, and partners to help him get his projects across the finish line. And Fimlaid found he wasn’t alone. He says other industry security leaders told him they were experiencing the same issues. So, in 2014, Fimlaid started NuHarbor Security to create the exact company that was absent in the cybersecurity industry.
NuHarbor Security is an end-to-end provider of cybersecurity services offering managed services, security advisory, and even employing white hat hackers who conduct security tests by trying to break through an organization’s defenses. Right off the bat, they landed some big contracts with a handful of clients including the State of Vermont, a large Federal Government entity, and one of the largest legal consulting firms in the world.
The scrappy startup was first located in the Chace Mill along the Winooski River in Burlington. At the end of their first year, they had ten employees. Today they’re in a 20,000 sq. ft. building they own in Colchester and 70% of their 185 workers live in Vermont.
Fimlaid says the Vermont Employment Growth Incentive (VEGI) program deserves some of the credit for that growth. He says it resulted in an “extra hundred tech workers in Vermont sooner than you would have.”
NuHarbor used two VEGIs. One in 2019 and another in 2020.
In 2019, Fimlaid says VEGI allowed him to expand his NuHarbor team and remain headquartered in Vermont. Fimlaid says the 2020 VEGI allowed NuHarbor to spend on a capital expansion project while still continuing to hire.
“Trying to build a workforce in Vermont is a challenge, especially in cybersecurity. In Vermont we’re trying to build a sustainable and long-term talent pool for cybersecurity professionals.”
Fimlaid says to get a new staff member up to a contributing level takes about six months of training. He points to 2021 as an example when he hired 40 security engineers and spent $2.8M to train them.
“It would have been easier to recruit people from other parts of the country but knowing that with VEGI - if we do all the right things and execute on forward plans in Vermont made VEGI appealing to pursue.”
Without VEGI, Fimlaid says NuHarbor would likely have a more distributed workforce.
“We would have a more concentrated workforce in a southern state for tax purposes and access to talent. I can tell you that we probably wouldn’t have a majority of the staff here in Vermont.”
Vermont wants those cybersecurity jobs and that talent. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median pay for an Information Security Analyst is $120,360. That’s more than double the median pay in Vermont. By keeping these high-paying jobs within the state, VEGI has not only benefited NuHarbor, but it has also contributed to elevating the local workforce.
But NuHarbor isn’t looking to move. The leader in cybersecurity is all in on Vermont and Fimlaid is all in on VEGI.
“It’s a really good feeling to be able to create jobs and see people raise families,” he says. “It’s a strong local workforce we’ve helped create and shepherd over the years. My hope is that we can make cybersecurity an economic pillar of Vermont. We’re a pretty good example of VEGI working and showing that it does pay off.”