KC Wilberg joined Acuity last July with a singular mission: To bring the company into the intelligence community.
Acuity has long delivered innovative technical solutions for agencies supporting national security and public safety missions. As vice president of IC, Wilberg is looking to expand that footprint into a new market.
“We have a proven track record including extensive IT modernization experience at DHS, SEC, and the State Department, and now we are bringing that expertise to the 18 organizations that make up the intelligence community,” he said.
In the IC, agencies face a particular challenge. They need to accelerate the adoption of mission-critical technological innovations, but need to do that in ways that ensure the highest levels of security for their data and systems. Acuity’s expertise checks both boxes, Wilberg said.
“We provide technical and process expertise to walk with agencies through the development and deployment of modern technologies and tools that are ever-changing,” he said.
In one recent case, “we implemented a system for a national security customer using machine learning that incorporates dashboards with natural language processing, resulting in real-time metrics,” Wilberg said. “We’ve supported other clients through multitiered development of cloud-based big data and analytic platforms, so that they can easily share information, eliminate silos and accelerate investigations.”
For another national security client, Acuity developed a major system that transformed its agile DevOps practice to embrace transparency, collaboration and continuous learning.
“Acuity is able to offer federal agencies the most modern tools, processes and techniques,” Wilberg said. “We focus on developing our team members and using repeatable, automated processes to deliver those capabilities.”
To ensure its solutions meet the IC’s highest security standards, Acuity has taken a proactive role in bringing zero trust security to the forefront. This is absolutely critical, given federal mandates to adopt this framework and build cyber resilience in development.
“Many customers are struggling with this: What does zero trust mean and how do we do that?” Wilberg said.
Simply put, “zero trust is a framework that helps agencies prevent adversaries, including insiders, from gaining access, to data when they don’t have a need to know,” he said. “Acuity has expertise in deploying that zero trust model across data, systems, applications and networks.”
While others make similar claims, Acuity has a strong performance history, and it looks to differentiate itself by putting special emphasis on the things it does best.
“We zero in on areas like DevSecOps and IT modernization, fine-tuning our best practices, our playbooks, and our approaches to best fit the needs of the various customer agencies we support,” Wilberg said.
As he looks to grow the IC practice, Wilberg is focusing first on the CIA, the Directorate of National Intelligence and the Defense Information Agency, while being opportunistic within the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office. This approach will ensure targeted and focused expansion avoiding scattershot paralysis, he said.
Being new to the IC space, Acuity faces challenges here.
“The IC is a very close-knit community,” he said. “There are a lot of gates to pass through to do business within the IC world. The mission is so vital and so secret and so important: the IC can’t afford to award something to somebody they don’t know and trust.”
To get Acuity into the arena, Wilberg is looking to partner with others.
“We will team with trusted providers, augmenting their teams to deliver Acuity capability and Acuity personnel, so that we can start gaining a foothold and become a known entity within these agencies,” he said.
With 20-plus years of experience supporting the IC, Wilberg joined Acuity to do just that.
“Acuity hired me to break into the IC market, to open those doors and to join targeted IC enterprise contracts, so that we can showcase our capabilities, deliver against our customers’ missions and make an impact,” he said.
At the same time, he’s driving internal change in support of these objectives.
“From the contracting perspective, intelligence is a different world in terms of processes and procedures,” he said. “I am working with the company to account for the IC nuances as they relate to corporate functions such as contracts, finance, and proposals ⏤ to ensure that we can be most effective within that community. The differences really hit home when you adjust your ways of working specifically to the needs of IC.”
Wilberg cut his GovCon teeth on DOD and the Special Operations Command assignments. A 15-year stint supporting the CIA took him into the IC world: he’s supported the Director of National Intelligence and the Defense Intelligence Agency, and he’s never looked back.
“The IC is in the forefront of keeping our nation safe,” he said. “They are the folks that gather the intel around the world on the most dangerous activities going on this planet. It’s all about keeping our nation safe, keeping my family safe, keeping all of us safe. That’s what drives me.”