MacB wins $45M in Cyber Contracts
MacAulay Brown (MacB) has won a series of offensive and defensive cyber contracts and task orders for the U.S. government worth more than $45 million, the company says. The contracts support classified Defense Department and other U.S. government customers globally, MacB says. The work includes providing Host-Based Security System management, computer network defense, network engineering and operations, and around-the-clock threat and malware analysis.
DLA Awards Precise Biometrics $3M for Tactivo
Precise Biometrics says it has received a potential three-year, $3.1 million contract form the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) to provide additional Tactivo smart card readers based on the existing Common Access Card infrastructure. Precise Biometrics says the current user base is 5,500 personnel and DLA expects to expand Tactivo to an additional 13,000 users. Tactivo is a portfolio of smart card readers for smart phones and tablets. The contract has a one-year base period and two one-year options.
Kryptowire Added to GSA IT Schedule 70
The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate says that Kryptowire, which last fall received a $1.7 million contract from the department for research into mobile device security, has been added to the General Services Administration’s (GSA) IT Schedule 70 within a compressed timeframe. S&T says that under GSA’s FASt Lane, it was able to help Kryptowire get on the GSA’s contract schedule in 35 days, making it easier for the technology company to do business with the government and put new technologies into the hands of federal agencies faster. Kryptowire’s technology will provide mobile app vetting for Android and iOS mobile applications, as well as mobile app archiving across 10 product lines, allowing the government to analyze the security and privacy of their own and any third party apps used in the workplace, S&T says. “We are excited to have the first DHS S&T performer successfully go through GSA’s program and be awarded a Schedule contract,” says Reginald Brothers, under secretary for S&T. “This program will ensure the technologies we fund are accessible to our government partners.” S&T says there are more than 90,000 mobile devices across DHS.
PlateSmart Technologies to Provide LPR Solution for New York MTA
PlateSmart Technologies says it will provide its ARES Automatic License Plate Recognition solution for New York Metropolitan Transit Authority’s Bridges and Tunnels, part of a project with Schneider Electric. “The recent attacks in Brussels only highlight the necessity of doing everything we can to keep terrorism from our shores,” says John Chigos, CEO of PlateSmart. The company says its software-only Automatic License Plate Recognition and video analytic solutions are compatible with state-of-the-art and legacy cameras.
Navy Base to Introduce DBIDS at all Gates
The Naval Submarine Base New London soon will implement the Defense Biometrics Identification System (DBIDS) at all of is gates, enhancing base security, according to an article in the base’s newsletter The Dolphin. DBIDS is an identification system that uses barcodes and biometric—typically fingerprints—to identify cardholders. The gate guard uses a wireless handheld device to scan the identity card’s barcode and or person’s fingerprints depending on the Force Protection Condition. DBIDs will notify a guard if a credential is lost or stolen, if a person is barred from the base, is a fake ID, and if there are any criminal charges against the person named on the card.
Univ. of Washington Team wins Grant to Model Cyber Defense
A research team led by the Univ. of Washington has received a five-year, $7.5 million Defense Department Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative to better model and defend against advanced persistent threat (APT)-style cyber attacks, the school says. The team will develop a new scientific framework to understand APTs and mathematically represent adversarial cyber interactions. Because APTs consist of many kinds of attacks over time and many variants can lead to the same composed attack, the team intends to analyze and quantify which side is gaining or losing at any time to help the system know when to keep deploying a particular defense and when to switch to something else.