LEHIGH CO., Pa. – From serving in the military to now protecting companies and government agencies against cyber threats, Michael Hawkins is the founder and CEO of South Whitehall Township-based cyber security company Netizen Corporation.<\/p>\n
“It’s been a lifelong passion of mine,” said Hawkins.<\/p>\n
69 News sat down for a one-on-one interview with Hawkins.<\/p>\n
Netizen has more than 30 employees and offices in Virginia and South Carolina. The company recently secured a contract to do work for NASA.<\/p>\n
“That’s going to be a probably really, really big contract for us. It’s predominantly a new market for us,” said Hawkins.<\/p>\n
Hawkins said this contract is a little bit different for Netizen.<\/p>\n
“A lot of hardware, software type sales type stuff. \u00a0It’s something we’ve been wanting to expand into for a very long time. It’s extremely lucrative and we’re really looking forward to that,” said Hawkins.<\/p>\n
Netizen was also awarded a $179 million contract with the Department of Homeland Security, doing IT and cyber security for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.<\/p>\n
“So, we see a lot of expansion coming not only here, but nationwide. We’ll probably triple our size over the next twelve months,” said Hawkins.<\/p>\n
Hawkins said the company does work for at least a dozen government agencies each year. He said the Lehigh Valley’s proximity to major metro areas and much lower cost of living compared to larger areas are a couple of reasons which make it an ideal place for the company headquarters to stay for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n
“It’s an easy place to hire in, there’s so much going on in the Lehigh Valley; it’s growing so fast. It really sells itself,” said Hawkins.<\/p>\n
Hawkins said in addition to these long-term contracts, Netizen has bids for several more. The company is also negotiating with more agencies and there are new commercial customers it is onboarding.<\/p>\n
Jack’s full interview below:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEHIGH CO., Pa. – From serving in the military to now protecting companies and government agencies against cyber…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,27048,111454,10998,111453],"class_list":["post-263915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-jack-reinhard","tag-law-enforcement-training-center","tag-lehigh-co","tag-netizen-corporation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}