CIA | The Contracting Education Academy

May 2, 2019 By AMK

CIA considering cloud contract worth ‘tens of billions’

After six years in a classified commercial cloud built by Amazon Web Services, the CIA wants more commercial cloud capabilities from potentially multiple companies.

The agency is in the early stages of planning a contract for commercial cloud computing services that will be worth “tens of billions” of dollars, according to contracting documents presented to select tech companies by the CIA in late March and obtained by Nextgov.

Dubbed the Commercial Cloud Enterprise, or C2E, the two-phase initiative will “expand and enhance” the commercial cloud capabilities it first contracted for with Amazon Web Services in 2013.

That contract, called C2S and valued at up to $600 million over 10 years, provided commercial cloud capabilities such as data storage, computing and analytics to the CIA and its 16 sister agencies within the intelligence community.

“Since that time, cloud computing has proven transformational for the IC–increasing the speed at which new applications can be developed to support mission and improving the functionality and security of those applications,” the CIA contracting documents state.

Whereas C2S has been managed by a single company, the CIA expects to “acquire foundational cloud services” from multiple vendors in phase one of C2E, which is good news for companies like IBM, Microsoft, Google and others expected to compete for the contract.

Keep reading article at: https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/04/cia-considering-cloud-contract-worth-tens-billions/156222

November 8, 2018 By AMK

DoD task force addresses the growing threats to critical technology

Amid an alleged campaign of hacking by the Chinese government, efforts are taking place to prevent the exfiltration of data and protect sensitive information that is stored in the U.S. government and the defense-industrial base.

In a memo dated Oct. 24, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis announced the creation of the Protecting Critical Technology Task Force to safeguard critical American technology.

“Each year, American businesses lose hundreds of billions of dollars while our military superiority is challenged,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan said in a statement. “Together with our partners in industry, we will use every tool at our disposal to end the loss of intellectual property, technology and data critical to our national security.”

The PCTTF will report to Shanahan and Gen. Paul Selva, the vice chairman of the joint chief of staff. It includes representatives from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Security Service, according to an industry official briefed on the matter.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/2018/11/02/a-new-dod-task-force-addresses-the-growing-threats-to-critical-technology/

August 23, 2018 By AMK

Someone is waging a secret war to undermine the Pentagon’s huge cloud contract

As some of the biggest U.S. technology companies have lined up to bid on the $10 billion contract to create a massive Pentagon cloud computing network, the behind-the-scenes war to win it has turned ugly.

In the past several months, a private investigative firm has been shopping around to Washington reporters a 100-plus-page dossier raising the specter of corruption on the part of senior Defense Department and private company officials in the cloud contract competition. But at least some of the dossier’s conclusions do not stand up to close scrutiny.

The dossier insinuates that a top aide to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis worked with Mattis and others to steer the contracting process to favor Amazon Web Services, or AWS—and enrich the aide. The aim of the dossier seems clear: to prevent the deal from going solely to AWS, the odds-on favorite in part because it operates the CIA’s classified commercial cloud. Far less clear, however, is who backed its creation and distribution.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/08/someone-waging-secret-war-undermine-pentagons-huge-cloud-contract/150684/

December 4, 2017 By AMK

The ‘huge’ hole in the government’s Russian software ban

The Trump administration’s order barring certain Russian software from government networks doesn’t fully cover one troubling vulnerability — the teeming ranks of government contractors.

That omission could leave open gateways for hackers looking to pilfer government secrets, cybersecurity specialists warn, something that has reportedly happened in recent years with contractors from the CIA and the NSA. But legal experts say the government has only limited ability to require contractors to uproot Kaspersky Lab’s products from their computers.

“It’s a huge area of risk, especially with some of the recent breaches at the NSA and the CIA where it was clear that these contractors were the source of it,” said Trevor Rudolph, the former head of an OMB team that helps agencies improve their cyber defenses.

Matt Keller, who advises government clients on digital security programs as a vice president at GuidePoint, dubbed the issue a “moderate to high risk” for federal agencies.

It’s impossible to quantify the risk exactly, but hundreds of thousands of federal contractors hold top secret clearances.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/24/the-huge-hole-in-the-governments-russian-software-ban-259473

November 10, 2017 By AMK

Where should agencies look for innovation?

Startups and government may sound like an unlikely pairing. But according to intelligence workers, they’re the perfect match when it comes to innovation.

“Innovation is really happening down at the lower levels at the startup companies,” said John Kammerer, the National Security Agency’s technical director of high performance computing solutions, during a Nov. 2 panel discussion at NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference in Washington, D.C.

Tech moves fast, Kammerer said, and while the incumbent companies still have a lot to offer in the way of government contracts, they too are leaning on startups to develop components. The proof, he added, is when the traditional big government contractors scoop up emerging companies.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2017/11/03/nsa-innovation-startups.aspx

After six years in a classified commercial cloud built by Amazon Web Services, the CIA wants more commercial cloud capabilities from potentially multiple companies.

Amid an alleged campaign of hacking by the Chinese government, efforts are taking place to prevent the exfiltration of data and protect sensitive information that is stored in the U.S. government and the defense-industrial base.

As some of the biggest U.S. technology companies have lined up to bid on the $10 billion contract to create a massive Pentagon cloud computing network, the behind-the-scenes war to win it has turned ugly.

The Trump administration’s order barring certain Russian software from government networks doesn’t fully cover one troubling vulnerability — the teeming ranks of government contractors.

Startups and government may sound like an unlikely pairing. But according to intelligence workers, they’re the perfect match when it comes to innovation.

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