No matter who gets elected, the next U.S. president will face some dangerous security challenges from day one. Security experts agree that ISIS and its growing number of terrorist attacks will need to be confronted head on. Although its economy is faltering, Russia’s military is modernizing rapidly, and the country is becoming increasingly aggressive. Then there’s China, which is illegally (according to a recent ruling) building artificial islands in international waters to extend its borders farther out to sea.

To prevent wars, military might counts, but so does technology in the form of advanced intelligence gathering. Knowledge is power, and one company has been helping both the U.S. government and some corporate clients gain it.

An Intelligence-Gathering Force

KEYW Holding Corp. (NSDQ: KEYW) is a small company with a market cap of $400 million, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in intelligence-gathering power.

The company operates in five main businesses: cybersecurity, geospatial intelligence, cloud computing, custom engineering and counterterrorism.

Its cybersecurity unit helps identify and prevent cyberattacks. KEYW also sells systems to the governmental, military and law enforcement agencies to gather and analyze data from various sources, such as websites and phone logs.

KEYW can fit aircraft (it owns seven and can hire others) with sensors and run airborne intelligence-gathering missions. Those sensors include radar, high-resolution visible-infrared cameras and, the one feature I find most interesting, laser-distancing sensors (LIDAR).

These sensors use lasers to develop accurate maps and even penetrate ground cover to find hidden structures underneath. Scientists recently used the sensors to locate medieval cities in Cambodia and Honduras that had been lost to the jungle centuries ago. Other KEYW sensors can identify disturbed ground, pinpointing underground tunnel and bunker systems. The company also can access satellite systems to gather information on a global scale.

The cloud-computing operation offers clients access to KEYW’s secure data centers that provide both software and infrastructure as services. KEYW evaluates its customers’ data needs, then sets up secure systems for the client to access that data on its servers.

When clients present KEYW with a problem, a team of engineers and experts designs systems and equipment to deal with it.

KEYW’s counterterrorism operations incorporate all the other disciplines to help governments and law enforcement track down terrorists.

Rapid Growth

KEYW’s revenue has been growing rapidly since the company was founded in 2008. In 2009 revenue was $39 million, and last year it hit $312 million. Revenue has been growing about 8.6% annually over the last three years. Earnings have been slow to materialize, though, largely thanks to the capital-intensive nature of its business. KEYW made a profit in 2010 and 2011, but has been negative ever since.

That could change in the next year, following some wins on major government contracts and the divesture of a business line.

Earlier this year, KEYW won a piece of a $460 million five-year contract from U.S. Cyber Command. Under the contract’s terms, KEYW will work with other companies to help support Cyber Command in cyber operations, project management and other missions. KEYW also landed a key spot on a $245 million contract with the Naval Research Laboratory to provide research and development support, and has been involved with U.S. Airforce efforts to develop smaller, more cost-efficient unmanned aerial vehicles with enhanced intelligence-gathering capabilities.

The company streamlined recently when it sold its Hexis Cyber Solutions business in the first quarter. Hexis served civilian clients and hadn’t generated cash flow over its three years of existence. So while KEYW isn’t without civilian clients, it has said its primary focus will be government clients. Given the threats in the world today, that’s a good decision.

Those wins and that divesture are already paying off. In the first quarter, revenue rose 7% to $73.6 million, largely thanks to those new government contracts. Operating income also rose from $2.8 million in 2015’s first quarter to $4.9 million, while gross margin was up from 29.4% to 31%.

For full-year 2016, analysts expect the company to post another loss, coming in at 36 cents per share, which compares favorably with a loss of $1.40 per share last year, based on generally accepted accounting principles. When non-recurring expenses are excluded, though, KEYW is expected to show a gain of 16 cents per share for the full year and move to GAAP-positive earnings of 23 cents per share next year.

Depressing as it is, an increasingly violent world is driving interest in the stock.The improving earnings outlook helps, too. A couple of Fidelity funds are major owners, as well as an Oak Ridge fund and another from Royce. Although we base our investment decisions on our own research, it’s reassuring to see such strong institutional interest in such a small company.

Buy KEYW Holding Corp. up to $13.