Near classrooms on the second floor of Utica College’s newest building, security is tight.
Past surveillance cameras, two identification card scanners and a fingerprint reader are cybersecurity computer labs used by the FBI, the Secret Service and other federal offices doing work so sensitive that college officials won’t identify the agencies.
Like Utica College in the last decade, dozens of cyber-related programs and businesses in Upstate New York have grown around the Rome Research Site at the former Griffiss Air Force Base. Syracuse’s Lockheed Martin and SRC have offices there.
Officially, it’s called the Information Directorate of the Air Force Research Lab, Rome, and it’s still commonly referred to as Rome Lab. Some 1,300 work at the labs there, carrying out highly classified projects and developing things like off-the-shelf supercomputers to help the military sift through the trove of video surveillance data gathered from drones and satellites.
Thousands more are employed in the surrounding area, many doing cutting-edge work in technology and computer defense. Companies have grouped near the lab to cash in on its tools and expertise, fulfilling planners’ vision to reinvent Griffiss after the Air Force base closed in 1995.
