Granite Telecommunications needed help after landing a bid to win a portion of a $50 billion government contract to shore up cybersecurity. Chris Chapin, its chief information officer, turned to Northeastern students for help. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
Christopher Chapin was speaking to 20 Northeastern students in a conference room in Quincy, Massachusetts. It was almost lunchtime. A stack of steaming, aromatic pizza boxes was competing for the students’ attention, until Chapin seized it back.
“We are growing rapidly, by about $150 million a year,” said Chapin, senior vice president and chief information officer at Granite Telecommunications. “And with the government business, we expect that to go to more like $350 to $500” million.
There was a gasp in the room. Chapin, a Northeastern graduate, was referring to a commitment from the General Services Administration to invest $50 billion in federal telecom contracts over the next 15 years with 10 American companies.
It’s part of the government’s new program, Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions, which is meant to elevate U.S. standards in light of global cyberthreats. Granite, a young, privately-held firm, won one of those bids last year.
The program puts Granite on the front line of a federal plan to shore up cybersecurity. That commitment is the reason why the 20 Northeastern students had been invited to lunch.
“Just being selected for the list of approved vendors isn’t enough,” said Robert Conner, who develops applications for Granite. “Because now we have to implement all those standards that we agreed to follow. And anytime you change any data in the government system, you need to see who made the change and when the change was made.”
Granite manages a large array of applications. The co-ops, for the most part, are helping to revise Granite’s code to meet the new government standards……. Read Full Story here