-: My name is Emmet Eckman, but everyone knows me as Rusty.
So, I'm the Director of Engineering
for Northrop Grumman's Cyber
and Intel Mission Solutions Division
as a part of Northrop Grumman's Missions Systems Sector.
Our analysts, they create reports that have been briefed
to the President of the United States.
So, we're impacting decisions that are made every day
and keeping our country and our citizens
safe around the world.
So, we do have some contracts with
the Department of Homeland Security,
where we're providing cyber services,
where we're doing just that for the federal government.
Our analysts, our engineers, our cyber professionals
are working every day to keep the most precious secrets
that the government has, precious and secret.
So, the Director of Engineering supports the staff
and the 1,400 people that are in the division
that are doing the actual work.
So, I'm responsible for helping the senior staff
and our Vice President and General Manager understand
the impact of engineering decisions across the breadth
of our contracts and our entire portfolio.
The kind of decisions that I'm asked to look at are,
"What are the skills that our workforce is gonna need
next year, 18 months from now, 24 months from now?
So, what are the certifications
that we need our engineers to have?
What kind of engineers are we gonna need in 18 months?
How many are we gonna need?
Where are we going to need them?
What experiences do they have to have
so that we can compete for and win government contracts,
and then provide those services to our customers?"
Yeah, so I can give you some examples from DHS
where the Department of Homeland Security
is asking for capabilities
to provide cyber security services
for all the departments and agencies
within the federal government.
So, the Department of Homeland Security
has been appointed the authority
for centralized cyber security.
So they go to contractors, like Northrop Grumman,
and ask for, "Can you provide us services,
can you provide us systems, and can you provide us people
to operate those systems?"
And so that's the kind of RFP that we like to go after.
We have to understand for our government,
you know, when the government comes to us and says,
"Is there a vulnerability in something?
If there's a vulnerability, how do we identify that
so that we can, then, figure out
how do we prevent that vulnerability
from being used by our adversaries?"
Because there are bad people in the world
who want to do things, who want to get at
our government's crown jewels,
and our job, along with the government,
is to help them figure out ways
to prevent that from happening.
It's really exciting work.