The National Security Agency (NSA) has accredited Lockheed Martin [LMT] for its cyber security capabilities, putting the company on a list of vendors that can deliver cyber incident response assistance (CIRA) to owners and users of national security systems.
“Serving as one of the first participants for the NSA’s newest incident response initiative and receiving accreditation validates our capabilities and further solidifies our role as an industry leader in the cyber security business,” Chandra McMahon, vice president of Commercial Markets for Lockheed Martin’s Information Systems & Global Solutions business, said in a statement on Tuesday. “Our Intelligence Driven Defense approach to securing networks, coupled with our extensive experience protecting .mil, .gov, and .com domains, enabled us to meet the rigorous evaluation criteria set forth in this program.”
The accreditation doesn’t give Lockheed Martin exclusive access to contract bids but it does pre-qualify the company for incident response work and it’s expected that owners and operators of national security systems will use accredited companies for incident response support, a Lockheed Martin spokeswoman told Defense Daily on Thursday.
The NSA provides CIRA accreditation to qualified providers that can consistently deliver cyber incident response assistance to owners and operators of national security systems in 21 focus areas, such as incident analysis, network traffic data collection and analysis, containment and remediation, according to the NSA’s website for its National Security Cyber Assistance Program (NSCAP).
The NSCAP program is designed around four pillars: intrusion detection; incident response; vulnerability assessment; and penetration testing. The accreditation framework incorporates each pillar “for evaluating the capability of commercial cyber assistance service providers against industry best practices and NSA-developed criteria,” the agency said.