The Army on June 23 released a Request for White Papers (RWP) under its cyber challenge for physical hardware/networking models to evaluate the feasibility of a Deployable Defense Cyberspace Operations (DCO) Infrastructure (DDI) that will support Cyber Protection Teams (CPTs) that are physically deployed to an organization.
The RWP says that the prototype technology initiatives that the Army is seeking “must advance capabilities in weapon system information technologies and be directly relevant to weapons or weapon systems.” The scope of the potential work will include research, development, demonstration, validation or transition of the prototype technology.
“The ultimate goal of the challenge event is for the selected awardee(s) to deliver hardware-based prototype [DDI] capability allowing operational units to evaluate technical feasibility of the capability across the various mission areas,” the request says.
For the current requirement CPTs would be closely aligned with combatant commanders and service missions. The teams operate within friendly networks and perform one of five cyber defense mission functions, including mission protection to assess network vulnerabilities, discovery and counter infiltration to detect and remove unknown malicious activity, cyber threat emulation to essentially do Red Team assessments of network security by behaving like known adversaries, inspection forces to do in-depth reviews of cyber assets to ensure compliance with DoD policies and regulations, and cyber support to help organizations identify and correct “deficiencies in security and defensive operations, policies, and procedures with the end-state of an improved and self-sustaining security posture,” the RWP says.
The initial requirement is focused on the OpenStack shared services layer. Submissions must address five technical areas, including virtualization hardware and infrastructure that runs the OpenStack micro-cloud, remote operations/reach back for protected connectivity between the deployable kit and the CPT remote operations center, operator access, future virtualization/containerization solutions, and miscellaneous technologies.
The RWP was announced by the Consortium for Command, Control, Communications and Computer Technologies (C5) on behalf of the Army and is only open to consortium members. The request was issued by the Army Contracting Command’s Maneuver Ammunition Systems Center at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J., for the Weapons Systems Information Technologies Center (WeSITC). The WeSITC helps customers in the Defense Department and the intelligence community rapidly acquire “innovative information-assurance, cyber and related technologies using Other Transaction Authority,” the RWP says.
Responses are due by July 13. Papers will be evaluated in the first phase of the effort and selected submissions will proceed to Phase Two, which will be a demonstration and evaluation of the proposed solutions in a laboratory environment. After Phase Two, the Army may select one or more solutions for an award, which would occur within about 110 days of the release of the RWP.