Science Applications International Corporation of San Diego, CA has announced that it will provide cyber security training to Department of Defense (DoD) personnel, under a prime task order through the Defense Information Systems Agency’s (DISA) ENCORE II contract. The contract has a 1-year base period of performance and 4 one-year options, with a total potential value of more than $21 million.
The training is termed “information assurance†(IA), and is broader in scope than technology security, encompassing all the ways in which information is handled. IA and cyber-security are convergent, of course, as when a senior defense executive took work home to an unsecured system and information about the VH-60N Presidential helicopter’s avionics ended up on servers in Iran. So how will SAIC secure federal data?
Under the contract, SAIC will formulate and provide IA education and training to help the DoD continue to meet all internal and federal cybersecurity mandates. This will include instructional system and graphics design; multimedia support; and development, integration, and maintenance of cyber security programs. SAIC will also provide technical support to DISA’s information security system, the public key infrastructure (PKI) program, as well as education, training and certification for DoD civilian and military members, and providing DoD computer network defense operators with training for monitoring networks and detection and reaction to current cyber threats and vulnerabilities.
The training will take place in Falls Church, VA; Columbia, MD; and Chambersburg, PA, and will be in compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). The federal government now has a comprehensive cybersecurity initiative, and the US Office of Management and Budget now requires that all users of federal computer systems receive cyber security awareness training. On May 29/09, President Obama also announced that he would set up a cybersecurity office, whose coordinator would be a member of the national security staff and serve on the president’s National Economic Council.
