The “Supermarket” of Cyber Security defense tools

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The US Department of Homeland Security has been tasked with setting up a centralized shopping hub where all U.S. federal, state and local agencies can get the tools and expertise for all their cyber security needs according to Help Net Security.

According to a Businessweek report, the DHS has been given $6 billion to spend in the next five years in order to make this happen and is currently accepting bids. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and other big contractors are vying for a piece of the pie, as well as several big cyber security firms, with the number of companies whose bid will be accepted has been limited to five.

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The program is a direct consequence of president Obama’s February executive order with which he tasked the DHS to – among other things – make sure that civilian government networks are made resilient to cyber attacks.

And even though it’s been started with civilian government agencies in mind, intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense will also be able to take advantage of it and acquire the software, hardware and the consultancy services offered.

One of the main reasons for setting this up was to solve the problem of keeping smaller agencies’ defenses up, as they don’t have a big enough budget to do so by themselves, and to encourage the reporting of information and details of attacks they are submitted to.