Houston expert: Top three ways to make cybersecurity a business decision

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A Houston founder explains why you should shift the way you think about cybersecurity from a cost to an investment in your business. Photo via Getty Images

For companies big or small, scaling your revenue securely is about building people, processes, and technology to help you deliver your value to market in the most efficient way possible. But shifting cybersecurity as a cost to an investment takes a shift in thinking.

Here are three tips to make cyber a business decision for your company.

Don’t fail at digital transformation. Whether you’re considering a digital “initiative” to stay ahead of competitors, reduce operational expenditure when possible, or simply drive efficiency to customer value delivery, transforming how you’re doing business should rest upon a foundation of security across your existing people, process, or technology. An effective cybersecurity program should drive confidence to your team to expand your tooling, processes, or delivery mechanisms with confidence. The alternate reality is you shift a working process to incorporate new technology, and something fails or breaks, causing frustration of your team and fewer dollars in the door. Here are a few tips that will help you make sound business investments in technology:

  1. New technology or system can introduce new cyber risks to your company. As a result, it is good practice to balance the value gained with the risks absorbed. Establishing a “new product” risk vs reward process will reduce ad hoc purchases and introduce more sound thinking to your team’s decisions.
  2. New technology purchases will come with vendor onboarding but beware of the challenges you face when those implementation or training hours run out. Ask for additional support hours as part of your purchase so that you’re always able to call a help desk for real support.

Secure design reduces long-term costs. Regardless of your business type, if some type of cyber-attack could affect your business outcome(s) — be it your product, the loss of sensitive customer data, theft of intellectual property, or disruption to service delivery — consider investments in your cyber program an investment towards the cost of future business operations.

For instance, manufacturers across virtually every sector continually balance “secure design” with efficiency/cost as they compete in the market. Their challenge: estimating future recalls and product “updates” to be paid for by future operational expenditure. The same can be applied to unforeseen downtime of a critical inventory, payment capture, or website system. In both cases, here are two tips to shift cyber from a “security cost” to a “business” mindset:

  1. Work with your security vendors to develop a long-term strategy rather than quoting an “install and leave” project. Security vendors are businesses too. They will respond positively if you tell them you will offer longevity in return for payment over time. 
  2. Amortize your costs this year into next year's costs of goods. If you can negotiate monthly or quarterly payments with your security vendors, adding 30-60 days of net pay dates, you’re already starting to shift security improvements realized tomorrow to costs you pay next quarter.

Your customers want you to have a great cyber program. Especially in regulated spaces like healthcare, defense, and other critical infrastructure sectors, there is a high chance your company’s cyber program must meet minimal cyber guidelines. Investing in the training, processes, and technology required to achieve some element of “compliance” is a must-have investment for doing business with big companies.

A mistake small companies make is allocating the minimal resources “reach the bar” without thinking about the risks. Employee turnover, scaling your business in new regions, and increasing purchase order sizes all carry a potential “new bar” you must reach on your cyber maturity. Building a cyber program initiative may help you increase sales. Imagine you say this in your next prospect meeting as you aim to win that big contract, “Additionally, we reviewed your cybersecurity supplier requirements online and are pleased to say we have certified documentation showcasing an evolving, continually improving cyber program that exceeds your requirements. We feel that adds to our differentiation.”

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Ted Gutierrez is the CEO and co-founder of SecurityGate, a SaaS platform for OT cyber improvement.

From Your Site Articles
Three Houston startup founders took the stage to talk product/market fit, customer acquisition, funding, and the rest of the startup journey at a panel at SXSW. Photo courtesy of the GHP

Houston founders demystify startup journey on SXSW panel

Houston innovators podcast episode 177

Editor's note: On Monday at Houston House, a SXSW activation put on by the Greater Houston Partnership, I moderated a panel called “Demystifying the Startup Journey.” Panelists included three Houston founders: Ted Gutierrez, co-founder and CEO of SecurityGate.io, Simone May, co-founder and CTO of Clutch, and Gaurav Khandelwal, founder and CEO of Velostics. The three entrepreneurs discussed their journeys and the challenges they face — from product/market fit and hiring to fundraising and customer acquisition. Listen to the full conversation on this week’s episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast below. Thank you to SXSW and GHP for the recording.


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Texas university to lead new FAA tech center focused on drones

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The Texas A&M University System will run the Federal Aviation Administration’s new Center for Advanced Aviation Technologies, which will focus on innovations like commercial drones.

“Texas is the perfect place for our new Center for Advanced Aviation Technologies,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a release. “From drones delivering your packages to powered lift technologies like air taxis, we are at the cusp of an aviation revolution. The [center] will ensure we make that dream a reality and unleash American innovation safely.”

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, included creation of the center in the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024. The center will consist of an airspace laboratory, flight demonstration zones, and testing corridors.

Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi will lead the initiative, testing unstaffed aircraft systems and other advanced technologies. The Corpus Christi campus houses the Autonomy Research Institute, an FAA-designated test site. The new center will be at Texas A&M University-Fort Worth.

The College Station-based Texas A&M system says the center will “bring together” its 19 institutions, along with partners such as the University of North Texas in Denton and Southern Methodist University in University Park.

According to a Department of Transportation news release, the center will play “a pivotal role” in ensuring the safe operation of advanced aviation technologies in public airspace.

The Department of Transportation says it chose the Texas A&M system to manage the new center because of its:

  • Proximity to major international airports and the FAA’s regional headquarters in Fort Worth
  • Existing infrastructure for testing of advanced aviation technologies
  • Strong academic programs and industry partnerships

“I’m confident this new research and testing center will help the private sector create thousands of high-paying jobs and grow the Texas economy through billions in new investments,” Cruz said.

“This is a significant win for Texas that will impact communities across our state,” the senator added, “and I will continue to pursue policies that create new jobs, and ensure the Lone Star State continues to lead the way in innovation and the manufacturing of emerging aviation technologies.”

Texas Republicans are pushing to move NASA headquarters to Houston

space city

Two federal lawmakers from Texas are spearheading a campaign to relocate NASA’s headquarters from Washington, D.C., to the Johnson Space Center in Houston’s Clear Lake area. Houston faces competition on this front, though, as lawmakers from two other states are also vying for this NASA prize.

With NASA’s headquarters lease in D.C. set to end in 2028, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, and U.S. Rep. Brian Babin, a Republican whose congressional district includes the Johnson Space Center, recently wrote a letter to President Trump touting the Houston area as a prime location for NASA’s headquarters.

“A central location among NASA’s centers and the geographical center of the United States, Houston offers the ideal location for NASA to return to its core mission of space exploration and to do so at a substantially lower operating cost than in Washington, D.C.,” the letter states.

Cruz is chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Babin is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Both committees deal with NASA matters. Twenty-five other federal lawmakers from Texas, all Republicans, signed the letter.

In the letter, legislators maintain that shifting NASA’s headquarters to the Houston area makes sense because “a seismic disconnect between NASA’s headquarters and its missions has opened the door to bureaucratic micromanagement and an erosion of [NASA] centers’ interdependence.”

Founded in 1961, the $1.5 billion, 1,620-acre Johnson Space Center hosts NASA’s mission control and astronaut training operations. More than 12,000 employees work at the 100-building complex.

According to the state comptroller, the center generates an annual economic impact of $4.7 billion for Texas, and directly and indirectly supports more than 52,000 public and private jobs.

In pitching the Johnson Space Center for NASA’s HQ, the letter points out that Texas is home to more than 2,000 aerospace, aviation, and defense-related companies. Among them are Elon Musk’s SpaceX, based in the newly established South Texas town of Starbase; Axiom Space and Intuitive Machines, both based in Houston; and Firefly Aerospace, based in the Austin suburb of Cedar Park.

The letter also notes the recent creation of the Texas Space Commission, which promotes innovation in the space and commercial aerospace sectors.

Furthermore, the letter cites Houston-area assets for NASA such as:

  • A strong business environment.
  • A low level of state government regulation.
  • A cost of living that’s half of what it is in the D.C. area.

“Moving the NASA headquarters to Texas will create more jobs, save taxpayer dollars, and reinvigorate America’s space agency,” the letter says.

Last November, NASA said it was hunting for about 375,000 to 525,000 square feet of office space in the D.C. area to house the agency’s headquarters workforce. About 2,500 people work at the agency’s main offices. NASA’s announcement set off a scramble among three states to lure the agency’s headquarters.

Aside from officials in Texas, politicians in Florida and Ohio are pressing NASA to move its headquarters to their states. Florida and Ohio both host major NASA facilities.

NASA might take a different approach, however. “NASA is weighing closing its headquarters and scattering responsibilities among the states, a move that has the potential to dilute its coordination and influence in Washington,” Politico reported in March.

Meanwhile, Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who represents D.C., introduced legislation in March that would prohibit relocating a federal agency’s headquarters (including NASA’s) away from the D.C. area without permission from Congress.

“Moving federal agencies is not about saving taxpayer money and will degrade the vital services provided to all Americans across the country,” Norton said in a news release. “In the 1990s, the Bureau of Land Management moved its wildfire staff out West, only to move them back when Congress demanded briefings on new wildfires.”

Houston research breakthrough could pave way for next-gen superconductors

Quantum Breakthrough

A study from researchers at Rice University, published in Nature Communications, could lead to future advances in superconductors with the potential to transform energy use.

The study revealed that electrons in strange metals, which exhibit unusual resistance to electricity and behave strangely at low temperatures, become more entangled at a specific tipping point, shedding new light on these materials.

A team led by Rice’s Qimiao Si, the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy, used quantum Fisher information (QFI), a concept from quantum metrology, to measure how electron interactions evolve under extreme conditions. The research team also included Rice’s Yuan Fang, Yiming Wang, Mounica Mahankali and Lei Chen along with Haoyu Hu of the Donostia International Physics Center and Silke Paschen of the Vienna University of Technology. Their work showed that the quantum phenomenon of electron entanglement peaks at a quantum critical point, which is the transition between two states of matter.

“Our findings reveal that strange metals exhibit a unique entanglement pattern, which offers a new lens to understand their exotic behavior,” Si said in a news release. “By leveraging quantum information theory, we are uncovering deep quantum correlations that were previously inaccessible.”

The researchers examined a theoretical framework known as the Kondo lattice, which explains how magnetic moments interact with surrounding electrons. At a critical transition point, these interactions intensify to the extent that the quasiparticles—key to understanding electrical behavior—disappear. Using QFI, the team traced this loss of quasiparticles to the growing entanglement of electron spins, which peaks precisely at the quantum critical point.

In terms of future use, the materials share a close connection with high-temperature superconductors, which have the potential to transmit electricity without energy loss, according to the researchers. By unblocking their properties, researchers believe this could revolutionize power grids and make energy transmission more efficient.

The team also found that quantum information tools can be applied to other “exotic materials” and quantum technologies.

“By integrating quantum information science with condensed matter physics, we are pivoting in a new direction in materials research,” Si said in the release.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

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