The Downside of Not Exhausting a $6 Billion Cyber Contract

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2014/06/downside-not-exhausting-6-billion-cyber-contract/87577/

By Aliya Sternstein
Nextgov.com
June 30, 2014

Agencies are partially taking advantage of a huge bulk-price 
governmentwide deal to help automate network vulnerability-tracking and 
fix problems in real-time, according to federal officials.

If departments underutilize the arguably complex acquisition program, the 
upshot could be saving money on a potentially $6 billion contract.

But if agencies latch onto the five-year endeavor, they could save money 
elsewhere, by eliminating the hundreds of millions of dollars currently 
spent on audit paperwork and incident response, advocates say.

The so-called continuous diagnostics and mitigation project -- funded by 
the Homeland Security Department -- aims to supply all agencies with 
products to move from traditional three-year vulnerability checks to 
three-day fixes.

Parts of DHS itself are using established tools and also must wait for 
current network surveillance contracts to expire.

[...]



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