To make it easier for government agencies to sort through potential cyber security services and to get work on contract more quickly, the General Services Administration (GSA) has added four separate cyber security services to the largest acquisition vehicle in the federal government.
The new Highly Adaptive Cybersecurity Services Special Item Numbers (SINs) are penetration testing, incident response, cyber hunt, and risk and vulnerability assessment, GSA said on Monday.
The SINs are part of the IT Schedule 70, which is also the most widely used acquisition vehicle in the government. Schedule 70 is an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity, multiple award schedule, providing direct access to products, services and solutions from more than 4,700 industry vendors.
The new SINs are in support of the Obama administration’s Cybersecurity National Action Plan announced earlier this year and “will provide government agencies with quicker and more reliable access to key, pre-vetted support services that will expand agencies’ capacity to test their high priority IT systems, rapidly address potential vulnerabilities, and stop adversaries before they impact our networks,” Denise Turner Roth, GSA Administrator, said in a statement.
The GSA is requiring that all IT Schedule 70 vendors that offer services within the scope of the HACS Sins to migrate those services to those SINs so that government customers have more clarity on the vendors and the specific services they provide.
The GSA is beginning supplier evaluations this week to include vendors on specific HACS SINs, which are expected to be available to federal agencies on Oct. 1 to begin purchasing cyber security services. GSA published the draft solicitation, including the new SINs, on Aug. 17.
The agency has worked with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “ensure the SINs will provide a high level of service to agencies and that companies providing these types of services are rigorously vetted to ensure strong performance.” The agency said it will continue to work with DHS as companies move their services to the HACS SINs.
Tony Scott, the federal chief information officer, said in a statement that “The Office of Management and Budget will work closely with agencies to encourage them to buy cyber security services through IT 70, and OMB will partner with GSA to provide new capabilities and add more vendors as these SINS evolve and grow more robust in their offerings.”