The ties are more than personal; the National Security Agency is among the few organizations in the world, along with companies like Facebook and Google, with a cadre of engineers trained in mining big data.
By working at the N.S.A., “you get to be on the bleeding edge, not just the cutting edge of what’s possible,” said Oren Falkowitz, who left the agency last year to start Sqrrl, a big data analytics company based on technology developed at the agency. Mr. Falkowitz has since left Sqrrl, which is in Boston, and is considering moving to Northern California to start working with a big data company.
Last year, Sumit Agarwal left his post as a deputy assistant secretary of defense to join Shape Security, a Mountain View company that offers what it calls “military grade” security solutions against botnets, groups of infected computers used for attacks.
Shape Security’s chief executive is Derek Smith, a former Pentagon consultant whose last company, Oakley Networks, which specialized in detecting insider threats, was sold to Raytheon, the military contractor, in 2007. Since its inception in 2011, Shape Security has raised $26 million in venture financing.
Computer security experts are leaving other parts of government for start-ups, too. Sameer Bhalotra, who worked on cybersecurity issues at the White House, was recruited by a Redwood City-based security company called Impermium. And Shawn Henry, a former computer security specialist from the F.B.I., left his job in government last year to help establish CrowdStrike, a computer security firm.
