Booz Allen Hamilton snags $1B CDM DEFEND task order

Booz Allen Hamilton secured a $1.03 billion contract Tuesday for the Department of Homeland Security’s Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program.

The award calls upon the McLean, Va.-based IT services firm to provide cybersecurity tools and capabilities to CDM’s Dynamic and Evolving Federal Enterprise Network Defense (DEFEND) program, specifically its Group D of agencies, which includes the General Services Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, NASA, Social Security Administration, Department of the Treasury and the U.S. Postal Service.

The DEFEND task orders, supplied through the GSA Alliant contract vehicle, will provide for increased cybersecurity services and more flexibility for federal agencies to tailor specific solutions that they can deploy to safeguard their networks, especially with the original CDM contracts expiring at the end of the year.

The contract, which has a base year and five additional one-year options, is the second Booz Allen Hamilton has secured this year for the DEFEND program — it won the $621 million Group B task order in February.

“We’re proud to continue our partnership with them as a cyber solutions provider, and to bring new capabilities that collect, process and act on real-time cyber data,” said Rob Allegar, Booz Allen’s CDM lead, in a statement. “We design Booz Allen’s CDM solutions to help agency leaders understand their attack surface, detect evolving threats, make informed risk-based decisions, and act quickly. The goal is to do all of this as fast as possible, before vulnerabilities can be exploited.”

Combined with the Group B award, Booz Allen officials said the new task order provides cybersecurity services to almost 80 percent of the federal government’s .gov environment, including 4.1 million network addressable devices, more than 1.75 million users and over 19,700 sites.

The award, the company said, is the largest federal task order its received in its more than 100-year history.