Northrop Grumman [NOC] on Monday said it has won a potential $350 million contract to provide operational services to a unit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that responds to, and shares information about, cyber threats affecting partners in the federal and private sectors.
Northrop Grumman unseated incumbent General Dynamics
[GD] for the contract to support the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT). The award is a five-year indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract.
“US-CERT is a franchise program for the Department of Homeland Security,” Jim Myers, vice president and general manager for Cyber Solutions and Northrop Grumman, said in a statement. He said the company will help “to identify cyber threats and manage the coordinated response to those threats.”
Northrop Grumman won the US-CERT contract last summer but the award was delayed due to a protest.
US-CERT is the operational arm of the DHS National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, which serves as a central location for multiple partners at various levels of government and business to coordinate their efforts for the protection of computer and communication networks. Operating non-stop, US-CERT responds to incidents, provides technical assistance to information systems operators, and distributes notifications regarding current and potential security threats and vulnerabilities.
US-CERT also operates the National Cybersecurity Protection System, which provides intrusion detection and prevention capabilities to federal civilian agencies.
For Northrop Grumman, the US-CERT win is the second award made to the company recently in support of DHS in the cyber arena. Last month the Government Services Administration awarded Northrop Grumman and three other companies the first task orders to begin providing cyber security products to select federal agencies to help them better monitor their networks for threats under the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program (Defense Daily, Jan. 16). DHS manages the CDM program for the federal government.