Booz Allen Hamilton [BAH] on Friday said it has won a $621 million task order from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the first award under a new acquisition vehicle that involves replacing existing cyber security tools that are part of an ongoing federal cyber security program and new cyber protection capabilities.
Under the six-year task order, which was awarded under the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Dynamic and Evolving Federal Enterprise Network Defense (DEFEND) program, Booz Allen said it will work to reduce the threat surface of the federal government. The company, along with number of other contractors, has been providing cyber security products and services to the federal government since 2015 under the CDM program.
The new award expands the company’s cyber security work for DHS.
“Our work will expand into new areas of cyber security, like incident response and automation,” Marcie Nagel, a principal with Booz Allen and leader of the company’s CDM work, said in a statement. “This work aims to help these federal departments and agencies leverage new capabilities that will ultimately empower our clients to defend their networks faster with more flexibility and greater visibility into the network itself.”
The DEFEND acquisition vehicle was launched last year and replaces the existing CDM Tools and Continuous Monitoring as a Service Blanket Purchase Agreements, which expire this August. The total value of DEFEND awards are valued at up to $3.4 billion across six separate task orders, according to a slide presentation by DHS last May at an Industry Day to discuss DEFEND. Booz Allen said that DEFEND expands the CDM to include security for cloud and mobile devices, automated capabilities for incident response and system compliance, enhanced protection of data at rest and in transit, and improved user management.
A DHS spokesman told Defense Daily on Friday that using the DEFEND vehicle, federal agencies will have “increased flexibility and access to a broader range of services.”
The CDM program is aimed at helping federal agencies acquire software tools to help them gain greater visibility about their information technology networks and to protect what’s on those networks. The program is currently divided into three phases and so far task orders have been awarded for two of the phases.
The DEFEND program applies to all three CDM phases and potential additional phases. According to the DHS slides, five of the DEFEND task orders are slated to be awarded by the beginning of the third quarter of FY ’18 and the sixth by mid-fiscal year 2019. Award of the first task order to Booz Allen was made on Dec. 12.
The DHS award follows two other cyber security contracts that Booz Allen has received this year in the national security space. In January, the company notched a potential $165 million contract from the General Services Administration to support U.S. Cyber Command and a $91.5 million contract to support the Missile Defense Agency.