The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday issued its first task order under the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation Program, a governmentwide effort to provide real-time security for civilian agency networks and commonly referred to as continuous monitoring.
The task order is valued at $60.6 million and covers specific quantities of named products, as outlined in the initial request for information released by the General Services Administration. The functional areas covered in that initial RFI included hardware and software asset management, configuration management and vulnerability management.
A source familiar with the order told FedScoop services are not included. Bids and responses from the 17 companies awarded a seat on the Blanket Purchase Agreement in August are due Nov. 22.
The competitive bidding process will be based on a review of the lowest price technically acceptable, or LPTA, a controversial evaluation criteria that ignores many noncost-related factors, such as past performance. Multiple awards are expected.
DHS awarded the $6 billion contract in August. The 2013 fiscal year budget authorized $185 million for the first year of the contract, which has four subsequent option years.
Although the Defense Department has not agreed to use the contract, most civilian agencies have, meaning the contract will change how most of the government approaches cybersecurity. Ultimately, DHS is expecting “continuous monitoring” will translate into 60 billion to 80 billion security checks every one to three days, according to the department.
