Cybersecurity Contract Announced for Continuous Network Monitoring
DHS has announced it partnered with GSA to award a multi-vendor, five-year $6 billion blanket purchase agreement contract for the "continuous diagnostics and mitigation" program to provide real-time diagnostic and mitigation services and enhance network security and resiliency.
Through the CDM program, DHS said it would work with partners throughout the executive branch and civilian government to deploy and maintain an array of sensors for hardware asset management, software asset management and whitelisting (specifying what’s permitted versus what’s not), vulnerability management, compliance setting and feed data about an agency’s cybersecurity flaws and present those risks in an up to date dashboard.
Under the CDM program, participating departments and agencies will be able to enhance their cybersecurity assessments by implementing automated network sensor capacity and prioritizing risk alerts, DHS emphasized.
It also noted that summary information from participating agencies would feed into a central federal-level dashboard, managed by DHS’ National Cybersecurity Communication and Integration Center, to inform and prioritize cyber risk assessments across the federal enterprise and support common operational pictures that provide cybersecurity situational awareness to stakeholders.
