WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — A new business to Wichita had visitors Friday, including the CEO from the corporate office. Novacoast opened a Security Operations Center in The Epic Center, 301 N. Main. The international cybersecurity company was going to expand and chose Wichita for its new site almost a year ago.
On Friday, Novaoast CEO Paul Anderson, U.S. Senator Jerry Moran, Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple, and Sedgwick County Commissioner Pete Meitzner were part of a group that toured the new facility.
The Wichita office has a 24/7 Security Operations Center plus sales, software development, and cybersecurity engineering.
Anderson said the company plans to hire 60 workers to begin with, but he expects more expansion in the future.
“I’m just overjoyed about the experience that we’ve had here opening the office and then subsequently doing the hiring,” he said. “The pool of talent here has far exceeded my expectations. So, you know, my growth expectation for Wichita now is much higher than when we first come here, but we’re already trying to expand the office space even though we just opened it.”
Anderson said his company had had conversations with all the local universities about the training curriculum for roles with Novacoast, but everything has been great so far.
“The nice thing about us is that we hire at so many different levels that we don’t even need people to come out of university-specific education,” he said. “We’ll take people who are very green and build them from the ground up.”
Moran said this might be the beginning of something much more extensive for Kansas because of the increasing need for people trained in cybersecurity.
“We’ve made the pitch to communities across Kansas, including Wichita, that in particularly our universities, our technical colleges and our community colleges, if you will educate and train people who know something about cybersecurity, there are companies across the country who will come here to locate,” Moran said.
Anderson told KSN last year that he chose Wichita because he liked the revitalization efforts going on downtown.