The Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA) awarded a contract to Blackberry [BBRY] to renew and expand its use of the company’s AtHoc Networked Crisis Communications Suite for one year, the company said Tuesday.
The PFPA is a civilian agency in the Department of Defense (DoD) that safeguards the occupants, visitors, and infrastructure of the Pentagon building and 69 other defense installations in the National Capitol Region. It works with officers of the U.S. Pentagon Police, anti-terrorism, and protective services agents, as well as threat management agents including chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosives technicians.
Before previously using AtHoc, Pentagon resources were not connected to a common messaging and emergency notification network, preventing the PFPA for effectively communicating directly with organizations outside the building during crises, Blackberry said.
“AtHoc has enabled the PFPA to establish secure alerting and permission-based crisis communications internally and among numerous external organizations that, together, can respond to whatever threats might arise,” the company said in a statement.
The renewed contract also includes multi-year options extending the contract through 2020. The new contract covers 37,000 DoD users, which includes Enterprise Alerting for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Officers of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Defense Security Services, and DoD’s Washington Headquarters Services.
“We are honored by the continued trust in AtHoc by the Pentagon toward protecting its personnel. Their trust in AtHoc reinforces a shared mission for early warning, personnel accountability and cross-organization information sharing during times of crisis,” Guy Miasnik, president of BlackBerry’s AtHoc Division, said in a statement.
The contract value was not disclosed.