GSA revises proposal for cyberalert system
The General Services Administration has taken the first step toward putting in place a contract to enhance the government's ability to detect and share information about computer system intrusions
Federal Computer Incident Response Capability
The General Services Administration has taken the first step toward putting
in place a contract to enhance the government's ability to detect and share
information about computer system intrusions.
The GSA Federal Technology Service's Office of Information Security
this month released a draft request for proposals for the Enhanced Intrusion
Detection Capability (EIDC). It is based on the relatively new commercial
offering of managed security services, where a vendor performs the daily
monitoring of agencies' intrusion-detection systems.
The EIDC will become a basic part of the services offered by GSA's Federal
Computer Incident Response Capability, the civilian government's cybersecurity
warning and response center, said a GSA official. It will collect and analyze
information from each agency that signs up under the contract and then pull
that information together at FedCIRC to produce a governmentwide picture
of intrusions.
"The intended EIDC solution(s) will improve federal computer security
across U.S. government agencies and in the process will provide the federal
civilian government its first integrated line of defense against computer
intrusions," the draft states.
The draft relies more on commercial products than new government capabilities
such as the Federal Intrusion Detection Network, which EIDC is intended
to replace, vendors said.
"It just seems to focus much more clearly on managed security services
rather than a hybrid as before," said Richard Smith, vice president of federal
operations at Internet Security Systems Inc., an intrusion-detection solutions
company.
GSA sent the draft only to vendors on the Safeguard security contract,
not to the entire vendor community. GSA awarded Safeguard to provide security
packages for agencies trying to comply with Presidential Decision Directive
63, which requires agencies to secure systems critical to national security.
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