Ten Companies Awarded Encryption Contracts

The General Services Administration Monday awarded 10 companies contracts for encryption software under a blanket purchase agreement worth at least $79 million over five years.

GSA, the Office of Management and Budget and the Defense Department announced the contracts, which will be used to help governments from county governments to the largest federal agency to guard sensitive, unclassified data that reside on laptops, mobile computing gadgets and thumb drives. OMB's Karen Evans previewed the announcement earlier this month.

The awardees are:

• MTM Technologies Inc.
• Rocky Mountain Ram LLC
• Carahsoft Technology Corp.
• Spectrum Systems Inc.
• SafeNet Inc.
• Hi Tech Services Inc.
• Autonomic Resources LLC
• GovBuys Inc.
• Intelligent Decisions Inc.
• Merlin International.

Dave Wennegren, deputy chief information officer for Defense, said 30 proposals were submitted for the award.

The BPA was competed using the Pentagon's Enterprise Software Initiative and GSA’s governmentwide SmartBUY program.

The military's Enterprise Software Initiative and the Air Force’s 754th Electronic Systems Group at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Alabama will provide acquisition and contract support for the awards and GSA’s SmartBUY program will provide acquisition support for civilian agencies, including state and local governments.

"By working with the federal government to protect this important information we have the ability to add another layer of protection, to New York's cybersecurity program, in an extremely cost-effective way," said New York Governor Eliot Spitzer in a statement.

The software licenses are transferable within a federal agency. All prices are as low as or lower than prices each vendor has available on GSA schedules with the government expecting to avoid costs up to $73 million over the life of the contracts. Additionally discounts on volume pricing range up to 85 percent. Volume pricing is based on tiers for 10,000, 33,000, and 100,000 users.

The products the companies will sell are:

• Mobile Armor LLC’s Data Armor
• Safeboot NV’s Safeboot Device Encryption
• Information Security Corp.’s Secret Agent
• SafeNet Inc.’s SafeNet ProtectDrive
• Encryption Solutions Inc.’s SkyLOCK At-Rest
• SPYRUS Inc.’s Talisman/DS Data Security Suite
• WinMagic Inc.’s SecureDoc
• CREDANT Technologies Inc.’s CREDANTMobile Guardian
• GuardianEdge Technologies’ GuardianEdge