IronNet, a network detection and response provider, has inked a federal contract to provide cybersecurity services for the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), the largest of the Navy’s five systems commands.
Serving 17 Defense Customers
The federal contract, which is valued at $1.2 million annually, includes 17 Defense Industrial Base (DIB) customers, was finalized following a pilot program in which IronNet provided its Collective Defense Platform to NAVSEA. The agreement should “help us to establish a base with a branch of the U.S. military upon which we are working to expand,” said General (Ret.) Keith Alexander, chief executive and founder of IronNet.
The pilot program revealed that small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the DIB especially are potentially vulnerable and soft targets for adversaries to gain operational advantage. The Collective Defense approach to DIB cybersecurity is designed to ensure that participating DIB organizations no longer have to protect their networks in isolation. Within the secure Collective Defense platform, they can pool resources, including the work of cyber analysts across organizations who are seeing and defending against the same cyberattacks hitting the sector.
In addition, the partners believe that the arrangement will boost the security posture of the U.S. Navy, as outlined in the 2019 Secretary of the Navy Cybersecurity Readiness Review. This comes in response to the DIB at large has experienced a 263% increase in cybersecurity vulnerabilities since 2016, according to the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) Vital Signs report.
Threat Visibility Amplified
The IronNet Collective Defense Platform will enable each contractor in the NAVSEA DIB program to increase its visibility of threats on the network, while also interconnecting them in real time under a private IronNet Collective Defense Community for NAVSEA.
Commenting on the deal, Alexander said:
“We are proud to support the United States military’s cybersecurity capabilities. This partnership comes at a critical moment when global cyber threats are at an all-time high. The IronNet Collective Defense Platform gives the Navy a best-in-class solution, enabling threat intelligence gained in one environment to be crowd sourced anonymously and at network speed among other organizations, especially smaller ones with fewer resources for identifying and assessing threats quickly.”
