$32.4 million contract is the largest acquisition of software security assurance tools in the world.
Industry Analysts reported that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) awarded the $32.4 million (€23.6 million) cybersecurity contract to HP under the DHS Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) government-wide Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA), with the OEM claiming the largest portion of the first task order awarded under the DHS CDM programme.
The five-year DHS CDM programme provides software security licenses for 33 US federal civilian government agencies, and was developed in response to the increasing number of cyberthreats. It enables government agencies to identify and mitigate network, system and software vulnerabilities in a cost-effective way; with the original CDM BPA, which was worth $6 billion (€4.3 billion) and including 17 vendors, awarded in August last year.
Under the contract, HP will provide licenses for two enterprise security solutions to address the application security requirements with the CDM programme. These include HP WebInspect and Fortify Static Code Analyzer (SCA), the first of which is described as an automated web application security and penetration testing tool able to mimic real-world hacking attacks and enable agencies to web applications and services for security vulnerabilities. SCA meanwhile is able to scan source code to identify the causes of software security vulnerabilities, correlating and prioritising the results to give agencies guidance to close security gaps at the code level.
Commenting on the cybersecurity contract, Al Kinney, Vice President, Cybersecurity Solutions Group, US Public Sector at HP Enterprise Services, said: “In today’s technology-based society, there is nothing more important than protecting our nation’s cyberspace so citizens will have continuous and secure access to services.
“As one of the first companies to begin work under the CDM program, HP is well positioned to help agencies enhance their security arsenal by performing analysis, reporting and threat mitigation on their core software assets.”