A cyberattack has a peculiar talent for sounding remote until it lands nearby. In a national briefing it is a trend line. In a small company it is a silent inbox rule, a frozen laptop, a payment that went to the wrong account. For the owner, the abstraction disappears quickly. Payroll is still Friday. Customers still expect an answer. The incident has acquired an address.
Justin Jarrell has built his public career around that change in scale. He served six years as an intelligence analyst in the U.S. Air Force, then spent roughly a decade leading North American Consulting Services, known as NACS Global. In 2021 he co-founded Forge Security in Huntington, West Virginia. The work moved him from studying risk and running an organization to helping other organizations see their own risks before an intruder does.
Jarrell lives in Point Pleasant, about an hour up the Ohio River from Forge's Huntington office. His geography matters. Forge speaks to the vulnerability of small and local businesses, the companies that rarely have a deep security bench but still hold valuable data, depend on connected systems and suffer very human consequences when those systems fail. The pitch is sober: make defenses fit the business, expose the blind spots, train people and practice the response.
The first operating systemIntelligence, then operations
Intelligence work begins with an awkward truth: the important thing is often what you cannot yet see. The analyst gathers fragments, tests assumptions and turns ambiguity into something another person can act on. Jarrell's later public advice carries the same grammar. Know what systems are in use. Know who has access. Look for forgotten accounts, unapproved software and unseen connections. Visibility comes first because a defense built around an incomplete map is mostly decoration.
His years at NACS added a second discipline. A leader does not merely identify a problem; he has to assign it, fund it, explain it and check whether the fix survived contact with daily work. The company was registered in West Virginia in 2001 and is based in Point Pleasant. Public professional profiles list Jarrell first as chief executive and then president. Forge emerged after that long operational apprenticeship, not from a weekend of founder fever.
That sequence is less exciting than a movie hacker and much more useful. Forge's public materials pair assessments and compliance software with training. The combination says something important about Jarrell's operating philosophy: a tool can reveal a gap, but a person still has to know what to do next. Security improves when the correct action becomes ordinary.
“And I'm just as invested in the next generation of cyber security professionals.”Justin Jarrell, 2022
Practice before pressureA range, a university and a live fire drill
In March 2022, the philosophy became physical inside Marshall University's Weisberg Applied Engineering Complex. Forge Security conducted cyber-range training for the West Virginia National Guard, focusing on attacks against industrial control systems. Marshall cybersecurity students followed the exercise as practitioners responded. The room brought together a private company, a public university, military defenders and students who could watch expertise under simulated pressure.
A cyber range is a rehearsal space. Networks, attacks and decisions can be reproduced without putting a live organization in danger. Participants learn where communication breaks, which clue they missed and how quickly a tidy response plan becomes untidy once the clock starts. For students, the lesson is especially valuable. A textbook can name a threat. A range makes them decide what to do at 10:17 when several alarms disagree and somebody wants an answer.
Jarrell described the partnership in personal terms. He said he had co-founded Forge because of his concern for small businesses and their livelihoods, then placed equal weight on preparing future professionals. The two commitments reinforce each other. Better prepared entrants give local employers a stronger talent pool. Real institutional problems give students work worth practicing. The benefit circulates through the same region.
Do not wait for a crisis to introduce the people who will need one another during it. Put them in the same room early, give them a realistic scenario and let the weak handoffs reveal themselves while the stakes are simulated.
There is a small but telling contrast in the collaboration. Cybersecurity is borderless; the training was intensely local. The attack patterns could appear anywhere, but the relationships were built in Huntington. That is how institutional trust often forms: not through a sweeping promise, but by sharing a room, a problem and the mild embarrassment of discovering that the plan needs revision.
The local translationTurning frameworks into a town's next decision
Forge's public grant guide shows the less theatrical side of the work. It lays out a path for counties and municipalities to compare their networks with a federal cybersecurity framework, identify priorities and use grant funding to address gaps. The accompanying price table is not a dramatic object. That is precisely its charm. Risk has been translated into a proposal, a scope and an amount that can survive a public meeting.
Jarrell later appeared in another public meeting with a different kind of network on the agenda. In October 2025, he briefed the Mason County Commission on a proposed broadband upgrade. He discussed expected private funding, the possibility of a U.S. Department of Agriculture loan and a contractor that appeared accommodating to the project. Cybersecurity and broadband are distinct fields, but they share a civic reality: both are invisible infrastructure until access fails.
The appearance widens the picture of Jarrell as an operator. He is not publicly confined to a founder's sales deck. His name appears on the Huntington Regional Chamber of Commerce board. Mountwest Community & Technical College board records show him participating in institutional votes. In January 2026, Leadership West Virginia selected him for a 58-person class that travels the state studying its economy, education, energy, government and tourism.
His reaction to that selection was notably attached to place. Jarrell wrote that he had heard about the program and its alumni for years, and wanted to learn more reasons to be proud of West Virginia and its people. It is a useful clue to the connective tissue in his résumé. Air Force intelligence, NACS, Forge, the cyber range, a chamber board, college governance and broadband planning all concern readiness. Each asks whether people and systems are prepared for what comes next.
The founder's advantageTrust has a zip code
Many cybersecurity companies sell from the altitude of fear. The breach is imminent, the adversary is sophisticated, the customer is behind. Fear can open a door, but it is a poor long-term operating system. Forge's public voice tends toward concrete habits: use stronger authentication, review access, check browser extensions, inspect email forwarding rules, understand the environment. The villain is less important than the next useful move.
That language suits smaller organizations because it respects their limits. A local company cannot simply become a global bank's security department. It needs priorities, an honest map and controls that employees can maintain on a busy Tuesday. Jarrell's experience running an established operating company gives him credibility with that Tuesday. He has sat on the side of the table where every recommendation competes with payroll, customers, staffing and time.
His other advantage is proximity. In a field crowded with anonymous alerts, there is value in a founder who can appear at the county commission, serve beside regional business leaders and help stage training at the local university. Proximity does not replace technical skill. It makes accountability visible. The person describing the risk remains present after the presentation ends.
Observe carefully. Translate the threat. Build the coalition. Rehearse the response. Then return to the ordinary habits that keep an organization ready.
The next mapA wider definition of defense
Leadership West Virginia gives Jarrell a broader room in which to apply that pattern. The 2026 program spans seven months and connects participants across industries and counties. For a founder already moving among business, public institutions and education, the appeal is easy to see. Cyber resilience depends on relationships outside the security department. So does economic resilience.
The interesting question is how far Jarrell will carry the infrastructure lens. His record already joins digital defense, talent development and connectivity. West Virginia has communities where a small employer, a school and a local government may depend on the same thin pool of technical expertise. A company that can translate between those rooms can matter beyond the contracts it signs.
Jarrell's story so far is not a reinvention that discards the past. It is a stack. Intelligence analysis taught him to look for what is missing. Operations taught him to turn findings into decisions. Forge gave those instincts a cybersecurity focus. Civic work supplied more systems to understand and more people to connect. Each layer makes the next one legible.
The work returns, finally, to the small-business owner staring at a locked screen. The best time to meet the defender, map the network and practice the response was yesterday. The second-best time is while everything still appears ordinary. Jarrell has arranged his career around that quiet interval before urgency, when preparation is still a choice and the next useful action can be taken without panic.