Cybersecurity Firm Opens Two Security Operations Centers in Cleveland

MCPc, a cybersecurity and technology solutions provider, is expanding its IT locations in Cleveland, not once but twice.

One of MCPc’s new facilities is a 20,000-square-foot, large-scale 24/7 security operations center (SOC) with Tier 1-2-3 security operations services. It’s located in the new Link59 building along the Cleveland Health-Tech Corridor in the city’s Midtown neighborhood. The Health-Tech Corridor is a vibrant, growing area populated by biomedical companies, technology companies and entrepreneurial enterprises.

MCPc’s SOC will house 150 employees, including technical engineers, solution architects, and sales and marketing staff. MCPc will also increase its capacity to 40 analysts, many of whom are coming up from its internship program and partnerships with local universities and colleges.

The SOC will feature a cyberlab dedicated to training IT professionals associated with MCPc’s customer-base as well as students with an interest in pursuing an IT career.

According to Ted Griffith, managing director for IT at JobsOhio, this important expansion is partly due to Ohio becoming a hub of technology talent as a result of the excellent IT and cybersecurity education programs offered throughout the state.

"We have a lot of universities," Griffith said, "and there's a growth in cybersecurity education that's taking place. That's one of the assets Ohio brings."

Peter Anagnostos, vice president of marketing, communications and community outreach at MCPc, echoes Griffith.

“Ohio has a sufficient number of higher education institutions that, from community colleges upward, are effectively training their students to meet the growing demand for skilled workers required by technology companies like MCPc,” Anagnostos said. “It’s a great advantage to doing business in the state.”

MCPc also acquired a former 117,000-square-foot RTA facility in Cleveland's Old Brooklyn neighborhood where companies can safely retire computers and other networking hardware. Services will include data scrubbing as well as physical decontamination. MCPc has plans to hire locally and create flexible paid internships for nearby public high school students.

The two new locations complement the company’s other Cleveland facility, a nearly 100,000-square-foot logistics center near Hopkins International Airport, known as SkyPark, which houses around 115 employees. With the two additional facilities, MCPc has increased the number of Ohio locations to five: three in Cleveland, one in Cincinnati and another in Columbus. The company is also exploring an expansion in Toledo, where MCPc conducts a considerable amount of business.

MCPc chose Northeast Ohio for these two new cybersecurity centers because the region has a high concentration of banks, hospitals, law firms and insurance companies, which require extensive cybersecurity operations and are subject to strict regulations around retiring hardware.