Strategic Security Survey: Global Threat, Local Pain
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation has awarded a $40 million contract to United Kingdom-based BAE Systems to provide security risk assessments, certification, and accreditation to agency IT systems.

It's the second multimillion-dollar cybersecurity contract the FBI has awarded in a little more than a month. In August, the FBI outsourced a range of cybersecurity services to Fairfax, Va.-based ManTech for $99.5 million. ManTech is providing intrusion-detection monitoring; security engineering; incident identification and response; vulnerability assessment and penetration testing; cyberthreat analysis; and specialized cybertraining services.

The award is also the first of a $134 million FBI contract vehicle called the Information Assurance Program Support, a five-year, infinite delivery/indefinite quantity effort, according to BAE.

BAE's Intelligence and Security Sector, based in Arlington, Va., will carry out the work under the new award, which makes the firm the prime contractor to provide information security risk assessments, a form of quality control, for the FBI's IT systems.

BAE also will oversee a cyclical and continuously monitored assessment process to ensure that FBI data -- both classified and unclassified -- is stored and transmitted safely even as the agency makes hardware and software changes to its IT systems. The firm will make changes to IT systems as risks and security needs change, it said.

Cybersecurity is a key priority for the Obama administration, particularly among government agencies like the FBI, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security that deal with sensitive and classified information.

The administration's $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2011 calls for increased investment in cybersecurity, although the White House has kept confidential exactly how much and where much of that investment will go.

Amid many security threats, the feds are shorthanded. Here's how they're acquiring hard-to-find skills. Download the latest issue of InformationWeek Government here (registration required).