The buildings at the National Business Park are loaded with SCIF space, said Randall M. Griffin, president and chief operating officer of Corporate Office Properties, which owns the site. But he would not discuss their specific security measures.
Demand for secured office space has grown so much that all the park's 1.7 million square feet is leased, to such defense contracting giants as Northrop Grumman Corp., Computer Sciences Corp., Titan and Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. Construction of a second phase of the park, which would add 10 buildings comprising 1.3 million square feet, is underway.
During an event at the Maryland State House last summer, in which it was announced that the NSA would be working more closely with state and local governments, NSA officials again stepped out in public view.
And again they said they needed to tap into local companies for help.
"It's growing out of an awareness that we can't solve all of our problems" alone, Eric C. Haseltine, the agency's associate director of research, told reporters.
Intelligence spending has mushroomed in the years since Sept. 11. Previously, intelligence spending hovered around $30 billion a year, said John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an intelligence policy think tank. Since then, it's grown to about $40 billion annually, he said.
Hoping to cash in on the growth, Anne Arundel helped start the Chesapeake Innovation Center, the country's first incubator that works exclusively with new homeland security companies.
Walking into the center, in a squat brick building near downtown Annapolis, is a little like entering Q's laboratory in James Bond's world.
In one office, researchers for PharmAthene are working on vaccines for diseases that could spread during a bioterrorism attack, including anthrax.
Three flights up, Secure Processing Inc. is developing methods for businesses to keep their computer networks safe from insiders. You never know when someone posing as a loyal employee may try to steal important secrets, said Terence Flyntz, the company's chief executive.
"We're talking about disgruntled employees, potential spies, even terrorists who could embed themselves and pretend they are something else," he said.
"They could pose even as janitors," he added.
Another company, Harbinger Associates, has developed software that can take an Arabic name, run through all its English spellings and match them against a watch list. Because Arabic names are often spelled many different ways in English, the person for whom authorities are looking can often slip by, according to the company.
The software is almost complete, and Harbinger officials hope their product will soon be used behind the guarded walls of the NSA.
