Shadowbear has been named to the Washington Business Journal’s list of the largest veteran-owned companies in Greater Washington, published November 7, 2025 and researched by the Journal’s Carolyn M. Proctor. The list names 105 companies and ranks them by 2024 total revenue.
It is our first year on it, and we are the kind of company you would find at the small end: a managed cybersecurity and IT provider in Ashburn, working with businesses that have no security team of their own.
Why this region has so many veteran-owned companies
Greater Washington produces veteran-owned businesses the way other metros produce restaurants. People leave the service here, they already hold clearances and know how federal work moves, and the customer is a Metro ride away. A list of 105 of them is not unusual for this region. It would be remarkable almost anywhere else.
Most of the companies at the top of the list are federal contractors: systems integrators, engineering services firms, and IT providers whose customers are agencies and primes. That is where the revenue is, and it is why the ranking looks the way it does.
What veteran-owned means at our end of it
Shadowbear is veteran-owned in the plain sense: it was founded and is run by an Army cyber officer. We are not going to claim that makes our detection rules better than anyone else’s. What it does change is the operating habits.
- Someone actually reads the alerts. A monitoring tool that nobody watches is a receipt, not a control, and most small businesses are paying for several of them.
- Checklists are treated as real work rather than paperwork, because the consequences of skipping a step tend to show up later and cost more.
- When something goes wrong, the after-action matters more than the explanation. What changed in the environment so it does not happen again?
That is the unglamorous version, and it is the honest one.
Who we work with
Our Cyber Defense Suite combines 24/7 managed detection and response, security monitoring, endpoint protection, employee phishing training, vulnerability scanning, and patching in a single per-user subscription. We work mainly with businesses of 10 to 100 employees that handle sensitive information: defense subcontractors carrying NIST SP 800-171 and CMMC obligations, accounting and financial services firms, and other regulated small businesses in Northern Virginia and beyond.
Many of them supply the same institutions the companies at the top of this list serve directly. The security obligations flow down the chain, and they do not scale with company size. A subcontractor with 30 people gets the same self-assessment requirement as the prime that hired them.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Washington Business Journal’s largest veteran-owned companies list?
It is a ranking of veteran-owned companies across the Washington metropolitan area, compiled by the Journal’s research team from information the companies supply. The edition published November 7, 2025 names 105 companies and ranks them by 2024 total revenue.
Is Shadowbear veteran-owned?
Yes. Shadowbear is a veteran-owned managed cybersecurity and IT provider based in Ashburn, Virginia, founded by an Army cyber officer.
Does Shadowbear only serve federal contractors?
No. Defense subcontractors are a large part of the work because of CMMC and NIST SP 800-171, but we also support accounting firms, financial services firms, and other regulated small businesses that hold sensitive data and have no security staff.
Do you work with companies outside Northern Virginia?
Yes. Northern Virginia is home and where most of our clients are, but the Cyber Defense Suite is delivered remotely and we support businesses outside the region.
Sources and further reading
- Washington Business Journal, publisher of the largest veteran-owned companies in Greater Washington list, researched by Carolyn M. Proctor and published November 7, 2025.
- CISA: Stop Ransomware Guide, the federal baseline for the controls small businesses are now asked about by insurers and customers.
If you are a small business carrying obligations that were written for much larger ones, we offer a free 15-minute Cyber Defense checkup. It reviews the security you already pay for, flags overlapping or unused tools, and identifies the gaps an insurer, auditor, or customer questionnaire would surface. Book one here.