Editor’s note: MSSP Alert is profiling companies listed on the 2022 Top 250 MSSPs list. We thank them for responding to our questionnaire.

Justice ITC Consulting, headquartered in Burleson, Texas and No. 249 on the 2022 Top 250 MSSPs list, focuses its business on delivering cybersecurity and outsourced IT to manufacturers and U.S. Department of Defense subcontractors. The company consists of 10 employees, four of whom focus full-time on cybersecurity for its clients.

Justice IT Consulting was founded in 2003 by Brooke Justice as a “side gig,” according to his son, Austin Justice, the company’s vice president.

Austin Justice recalled the company’s founding:

“Back in those days, Brooke served mainly Burleson (Texas) business owners, helping them with all things IT. Brooke may not have known it at the time, but there were bigger things destined for Justice IT Consulting. After years of working in enterprise IT and his side-gig in tandem, Brooke decided it was time to make Justice IT Consulting the real deal.”

After about a year of throwing the idea back and forth together, the Justices decided to take the leap together. They figured with Brooke’s extensive enterprise knowledge and Austin’s capabilities working with small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that together they could provide an enterprise level competitive technological advantage to the little guys.

“Today Justice IT Consulting has turned into a premier cybersecurity company and turnkey IT provider for manufacturing, aerospace and defense contractor companies throughout the state of Texas,” Austin Justice said.

Fast-forward to 2017, the Justices helped co-found and then later purchased CyberForward, a start-up delivering cybersecurity compliance consulting, policy development and documentation to the defense supply chain.

“Ever since, we have focused on supporting SMBs in this supply chain,” Austin Justice said. “We specifically help them design, and more importantly, implement, their CMMC/NIST cybersecurity compliance standards to provide a turnkey solution under one roof.”

People First Approach

Austin Justice said one of the smartest business moves they’ve made in 2022 is investing in their people:

“We improved our hiring process and what we brought to the table for existing and potential employees. Everyone thinks that information or a competitive edge makes all the difference in business, but there is no replacement for people. It can sink the ship or they can make all the difference in your success.”

However, the journey has not been without its missteps. As Austin Justice explained:

“Our biggest mistake this year was not responding to our staffing issues quick enough. We probably waited two months longer than we needed to pull on more staff and respond to the labor market changes. We recovered very well from it and expedited our investment in this area after we realized we let it go too far. We’re in a better spot than we started the year. But if I had to do it again, I wouldn’t have hesitated to make the investments we did. The beautiful thing about mistakes is you can recover very well from them if you admit you’ve made one and address it quick enough.”

The Road Ahead

Noting key priorities for 2023, Austin Justice pointed to educating users and customers, including authoring a book:

“The company is doubling down on providing access to education and understanding of compliance and cybersecurity for our end users and customers, whether they are paying us or not. I am currently co-authoring a book on CMMC compliance that should be out next year. We’ve started developing print and video materials for public access, and we’re in the development of a dedicated website to free and useful resources for CMMC compliance. Our priority is to help as many we can access information around CMMC and cybersecurity compliance, even if they don’t become a customer at first.”