Unisys has won a contract from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to design and install an integrated suite of security software tools and underlying infrastructure supporting those tools.
Under the agreement, Unisys will design, install, integrate and deploy offerings for intrusion detection, data loss prevention, network traffic analysis, malware detection, SSL decryption, packet analysis and other functions.
In addition, the tool suite will give USDA the ability to monitor and secure infrastructure and data for the department’s 29 component agencies.
Unisys said that the project is expected to result in a virtual Agriculture Security Operations Centre (ASOC) to give USDA real-time insight into daily activities of tracking, monitoring, reporting and responding to detected security incidents.
The contract has one base year and four one-year options, which are exercisable at the sole discretion of the government, and the base year value is estimated at $8m, whereas each option year is estimated to be worth $2.5m.
Gene Zapfel, Unisys federal systems partner responsible for USDA said that by setting up a security tools infrastructure within the new ASOC, the USDA will be better positioned to monitor and protect its IT systems and data.