Cyber Ninjas has been in the national spotlight thanks to the Sarasota company's controversial selection to lead an audit of Maricopa County, Arizona's presidential election results. While the company often gets referred to as a little known firm on the national scene, the business has operated in this region for years.

Doug Logan, CEO and owner, has declined requests to discuss the audit, but he spoke with SRQ in 2014 about his business. Here, republished in full, is a Q&A about Cyber Ninjas first featured in the March 31, 2014 edition of SRQ Daily. Logan didn't discuss politics, but explained the decision to locate Cyber Ninjas' corporate headquarters in Sarasota.

Here is the interview as published:

Ever wish your company was protected by ninjas? Doug Logan can help out, at least in the virtual sense. The CEO of Cyber Ninjas announced that he was moving his cyber-security company to Sarasota this May [2014], with a promise to add at least 8 to 10 employees. The firm helps companies around the globe improve on cyber-security, and even offers the intriguing service of "ethical hacking" to test your existing security. Logan took time out from defending digital attacks to speak about Cyber Ninjas. 

What exactly is 'ethical hacking'? It's when someone comes to you and says, 'Pretend to be a bad guy and see what you can do.' You are given permission, in writing, to attack an app and see what you can utilize to compromise the server or the end user's system. You then tell people what you have found that an attacker can do, and what they can do to fix it. You can divide hackers into the 'White Hats,' the good guys who are trying to better the world, and the 'Black Hats,' the ones trying to cause damage. My group is about as White Hat as you can get. 

What attracted you to relocate to Sarasota? Currently, I'm in Bloomington, Indiana. There are a number of reasons I like Florida. Sarasota specifically has its own airport with direct flights to our two biggest markets, Washington, D.C., and New York City, and Tampa is only an hour away and flies most everywhere else. There are favorable tax laws in Florida, which is always great when you are running a business. And my Mom lives in Venice, which is why I looked there in the first place. Plus, after this cold winter, why not operate in a place where people vacation? 

How do you feel about the workforce here? You are leaving a college town to come to Florida. One of the things I am good at is training new people. I worked for a company called Citigal, which set up in Bloomington and I grew that office from three people to 20 people in a year. I developed a process of training so that I could take someone straight out of college and make them billable in 10 days. There are not a huge number of computer science majors in the Sarasota area but I am sure we can find a few, plus everybody wants to live in Florida so it shouldn't be hard to bring people here, but I am not looking primarily for people who are experienced in the industry. I can train people to be experienced. There is such a shortage of people who know stuff in this field, it is an advantage to be able to take someone with the raw skills and teach them what they want to know.