GSA revises proposal for cyberalert system

[InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>]

http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0918/news-gsa-09-18-00.asp

BY Diane Frank
09/18/2000

The General Services Administration has taken the first step toward
putting in place a contract to enhance the governments ability to
detect and share information about computer system intrusions.

The GSA Federal Technology Services Office of Information Security
this month released a draft request for proposals for the Enhanced
Intrusion Detection Capability (EIDC). It is based on the relatively
new commercial offering of managed security services, where a vendor
performs the daily monitoring of agencies intrusion-detection systems.

The EIDC will become a basic part of the services offered by GSAs
Federal Computer Incident Response Capability, the civilian
governments cybersecurity warning and response center, said a GSA
official. It will collect and analyze information from each agency
that signs up under the contract and then pull that information
together at FedCIRC to produce a governmentwide picture of intrusions.

"The intended EIDC solution(s) will improve federal computer security
across U.S. government agencies and in the process will provide the
federal civilian government its first integrated line of defense
against computer intrusions," the draft states.

The draft relies more on commercial products than new government
capabilities such as the Federal Intrusion Detection Network, which
EIDC is intended to replace, vendors said.

"It just seems to focus much more clearly on managed security services
rather than a hybrid as before," said Richard Smith, vice president of
federal operations at Internet Security Systems Inc., an
intrusion-detection solutions company.

GSA sent the draft only to vendors on the Safeguard security contract,
not to the entire vendor community. GSA awarded Safeguard to provide
security packages for agencies trying to comply with Presidential
Decision Directive 63, which requires agencies to secure systems
critical to national security.

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