Electrosoft Case Study

Challenge

Electrosoft Services (Electrosoft) was founded in 2001 by CEO Dr. Sarbari Gupta to deliver IT services to federal agencies. Within the first year, the company secured its first prime contract and two subcontracts. Over the next 19 years, the company systematically grew into a team of more than 100 employees providing a diversified set of technology solutions and services, including cybersecurity. Leadership of the well-respected company had a clear growth vision. They also wanted a public relations and marketing partner to help elevate brand awareness with customers, partners, and employee candidates and to help position the company for a successful 8(a) graduation as a competitive mid-sized government contractor.

Solution

Boscobel initiated a competitor review and analysis of Electrosoft’s place in the market. The team recommended that the company position itself as a cybersecurity solutions leader, claiming its deep cyber expertise as a differentiator among the services it provides. Electrosoft was actively involved with cyber standards bodies and repeatedly delivering cybersecurity value to its federal defense and civilian customers at a time when cyber resilience was an increasingly urgent national security imperative.

The Boscobel team then initiated a media relations program to include press releases, press interviews, podcast pitching, and award nomination submissions. The team also took responsibility for the company’s social media strategy and posts to share company news, significant contract wins, an impressive company culture, industry award wins, and thought leadership assets.

Electrosoft’s Dr. Gupta is a prolific author, international speaker, and, notably, a co-author of several NIST special publications. Most recently, she and an Electrosoft colleague were named authors on the NIST Digital Identity Guidelines SP 800-63-4 (draft) which was released for public comment in December 2022.

Dr. Gupta also oversaw the development and facilitation of numerous Electrosoft-hosted virtual cybersecurity summits to bring together government, academia, and industry to explore important cyber topics such as Zero Trust; Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM); and ransomware, among others. Boscobel supported these events with news posts, industry event listings, media outreach, and social media, garnering additional awareness, registrations, and news coverage of the events. More recently, following a Boscobel recommendation, Electrosoft began partnering with the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC), tapping into the organization’s marketing and events offerings to create and deliver cybersecurity educational events.

To highlight key accomplishments, Boscobel published press releases, web news posts, and social media posts that promoted the company’s successes. The team also provided regular updates to targeted media about Electrosoft milestones, offering Dr. Gupta as an expert source for articles, roundtables, and podcasts. In addition, Boscobel wrote select award nominations and created the content for a quarterly newsletter that summarized key contract wins, customer news, thought leadership, industry recognition, and industry engagement from the previous quarter.

Results

In the first three years together, Electrosoft increased its annual revenue by more than 200%, earning significant cybersecurity services prime contracts with both defense and civilian customers. The company also made a strategic cybersecurity acquisition, expanded its senior leadership team, and continued industry engagement through thought leadership articles and speaking engagements. Recently, the company earned coveted positions on the $400M Department of Health and Human Services Cybersecurity BPA and the $125M NIST Cybersecurity and Privacy Support Services IDIQ.

As one example of its cybersecurity success and expertise, in 2022, Electrosoft was awarded a GSA contract to run the federal government’s only FICAM testing laboratory out of its headquarters in Reston, Virginia. Operating the state-of-the-art GSA FICAM Testing Laboratory, Electrosoft conducts formal and rigorous technical testing of Physical Access Control (PAC) vendor products for placement on the Federal Approved Products List. For those PAC products that pass the tests, Electrosoft assures that they will both properly authenticate Federal workforce access cards and fail authentication from bad access.

Over three years, Electrosoft more than doubled its LinkedIn followers and garnered more than a dozen industry awards recognizing company growth, leadership, cybersecurity excellence, government contractor excellence, and technology innovation. It also earned media coverage in the Washington Business Journal, Washington Technology, SIGNAL Magazine, CyberWire, GovLoop, and GovCon Wire, just to name a few. Boscobel also secured a podcast interview for Electrosoft’s Dr. Gupta on Washington Technology’s WT 360 podcast, a spot usually reserved for large government contractors.

Today, Electrosoft is a recognized federal cybersecurity firm on a steep growth trajectory. Its government contract awards, industry recognition, and media coverage place the company squarely on a path for a successful 8(a) graduation.