Booz Allen Awarded $113m SEC Contract
Consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton has been awarded a new $113m contract to deliver modernized cyber-defense operations to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
With this new 10-year contract, the Virginia-based firm will become the SEC’s leading provider of cybersecurity services. The contract was awarded on December 12, 2019, but was kept under wraps until yesterday.
According to a statement released February 20 on Booz Allen’s website, the SEC picked the 106-year-old company for the job after being impressed by its ability to comprehend the commission’s standing and aims.
The statement read: “Booz Allen was selected for its clear understanding of the agency’s mission and the firm’s reputation for building and operating modernized cyber defenses for federal and commercial clients that deliver rapid, durable improvements to security program maturity and effectiveness while generating cost savings.”
Booz Allen pledged to employ the same tools, techniques, and mindsets as today’s most advanced threat actors to defend the SEC. The company said one element of its strategy would be to discover unknown vulnerabilities before they can be used for malicious purposes.
“Our team will provide the SEC with leading-edge, threat-centric, proactive cyber defense with the ability to detect and proactively address unknown threats, keep up with the rapid pace of change in the cyber industry and provide advanced cyber capabilities at scale,” said Booz Allen’s senior vice president, Mark Gamis.
Booz Allen is the largest provider of cybersecurity professional services in North America and the only company to hold all three of the federal government’s elite cybersecurity accreditations: NSA’s Cyber Incident Response Assistance (CIRA) accreditation, NSA’s Vulnerability Assessment Service (VAS) accreditation, and GSA’s Highly Adaptive Cybersecurity Services schedule.
Gamis said the company would draw on its existing knowledge and experience to protect the SEC from bad actors.
“The SEC is essential to the strong functioning of the U.S. and world economy, so we are proud the agency is entrusting Booz Allen to deliver cyber defense operations to protect its data and other critical assets from increasingly aggressive and destructive cyber-attacks,” said Gamis.
“We will leverage our deep expertise and experience delivering cyber tradecraft across US Government and commercial clients and deploying groundbreaking cyber capabilities to protect mission-essential services and high-value assets.”
This post Booz Allen Awarded $113m SEC Contract originally appeared on InfoSecurity Magazine.
