Cook Security Group to build new headquarters

MILWAUKIE, Ore.—About five years ago, Cook Security Group started considering a new space and in mid-September the company broke ground on new headquarters.

Cook Security Group is a systems integrator, offering a variety of services, including alarms and access control, CCTV, consulting, ATM management, but the company is getting more involved in managed security services and that played a role in the new building. “It is difficult to find the space that we wanted that had a select amount of warehouse for equipment that we keep, but the majority of it being more of an operations center, housing our network operations center and our entire technology team,” Randy Neu, Cook Security Group's EVP and CMO, told Security Systems News.

“What we're finding is that we're fixing more stuff remotely, because we're becoming more of a technology company in addition to being a boots-on-the-street integrator,” said Neu.

The new facility will be three stories and about 26,000 square feet, Cook Security announced, and it will contain about 150 employees. In total, Cook Security Group has more than 250 employees. The company, which expects to be completed with the building around August 2018, has a national network of value added resellers as well as 10 branch offices in western states.

When it comes to Cook Security's customer base, 80 percent of the company's clientele is financial institutions, Neu said, and the other 20 percent spans data centers, hospitals and large commercial spaces.

“We're building it exactly to our needs,” Brian Cook, president and CEO, told SSN. The company's current facility is about 16,000 square feet.

“The current facility [is] all offices … so it was very hard to expand,” Neu said, adding that the new building is designed to be “very open, [with] roller desks with dividers, so we can move them around and reshape them. It's much more flexible and scalable.”

The company will also have capabilities for future growth, according to Neu. “We have the adjacent property next to it, so if we need to double in size, we actually can do that.”