AP A view of the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center before remarks by President Barack Obama, on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015, in Arlington, Va.

Governor John Hickenlooper, on a mission to position Colorado as a leader in cybersecurity, traveled to California this week to meet with executives of companies like Dell, Google and Hewlett Packard to talk about the growing threat of security breaches worldwide.

Hickenlooper said experts repeatedly emphasized the need to keep up with the latest tactics hackers are using to infiltrate companies and governments, including the recent breach of Democratic party officials' emails. "The new reality is that there are two kinds of companies: those who have been hacked and know about it and those that have been hacked and aren't yet aware," the governor said in an interview Thursday.

Hickenlooper said one reason for his trip was to pitch his latest venture, the new National Cybersecurity Center in Colorado Springs, which aims to provide education and training for cybersecurity professionals and to help local governments and small companies respond to cyber threats.

Colorado Matters host Andrea Dukakis spoke with three cybersecurity experts about plans for the new center. Mark Weatherford is the chief cybersecurity strategist for the California-based data center and cloud security company vArmour and serves on the board of the new center. Kris Merritt heads threat-hunting operations at the California-based cybersecurity company Crowdstrike, and Alex Kreilein is chief technology officer with SecureSet, a cybersecurity company that trains professionals to work in the field.