The General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service (GSA FAS) awarded CGI Group [GIB] a credential management task order worth $102 million over two years for the Department of Homeland Security’s Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) cyber program, the company said on Tuesday.
This task order provides identity management services for 26 federal agencies and was issued under the CDM Continuous Monitoring as a Service (CMaaS) Blanket Purchase Agreement and GSA IT Schedule 70.
The CDM program is aimed to fix problems with network perimeters of federal agencies in near-real-time. In comparison to the DHS EINSTEIN program, which guards an agency network like a gateway and perimeter scanners, CDM monitors within a network for vulnerabilities and suspicious behavior once a bad actor may have breaches the perimeter.
CGI is set to provide participating agencies with tools, sensors, and services to implement elements of credential management – an element of CDM Phase 2 Program. This will work to strengthen policies and practices for all authorizes users at participating agencies. The company said it will help agencies comply with the White House’s Cybersecurity Strategy and Implementation Plan (CSIP), which requires strong authentication for network accounts of unprivileged users.
“We are committed to federal clients as they work to comply with evolving standards while confronting an array of cybersecurity vulnerabilities and threats. We are proud to provide this vital support to the Department of Homeland Security and provide our identity management solutions for all federal agencies involved in the task order,” Stephanie Mango, senior vice president at CGI, said in a statement.
The CDM encompasses an eventual 15 continuous diagnostics capabilities. Phase 1 focuses on basic security monitoring services and managed assets. This includes endpoint integrity, hardware and software asset management, configurations settings management, and vulnerability management.
Phase 2 aims to monitor network users to ensure they do not engage in unauthorized activity and focuses the management of access control (trust in people granted access), security-related behavior, credentials and authentication, and privileges.
Phase 3 is planned to later access activity within networks to identify anomalies and alert personnel. DHS calls this boundary protection and event management for managing the security lifecycle.