Page 46 - FCW, November/December 2020
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Industry Innovators
CACI International
SteelBox
Every day, hundreds of thousands of text messages and phone calls originate from government employees’ smartphones. Unsecured and unencrypted, these communications are vulnerable to interception and eavesdropping.
To address this challenge, CACI International partnered with BlackBerry and Microsoft to create a secure and certified mobile communications app known as SteelBox.
SteelBox meets National Security Agency standards and has been approved for NSA’s list of certified mobile solutions. Microsoft’s Azure Government Cloud hosts the solution, which runs on BlackBerry’s Secure Gateway. CACI built the software and services in a FedRAMP High and Defense Department Impact Level 4 environment to provide the encryption. The secure servers act as traffic cop, routing incoming calls and messages to the end user’s smartphone or tablet.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, customers have used SteelBox to quickly enable government employees to work securely from home, to protect phone calls between foreign allies and U.S. officials, and to manage work schedules and operational data that demand greater security.
Carahsoft
Cloud Purchasing Program
With its culture of forging partnerships with large commercial technology companies, Carahsoft has always had a focus on finding innovative ways for government customers to buy the
solutions they need to address their most pressing problems.
In 2019, the company created the Carahsoft Cloud Purchasing Program
to streamline the process for public- sector customers to buy cloud solutions. Carahsoft expanded the consumption- based model of its VMware program to a variety of contract vehicles and broadened the range of cloud services available. The cloud program uses a point-based system that allows customers the flexibility to prepay for services or pay as they go, and they can monitor their point balance via a dashboard.
Early adopters include the Air Force, Army, Environmental Protection Agency, NASA and Hawaii. Although the program already features leading companies such as Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft, Carahsoft continues to add other cloud vendors as the program evolves.
CGI Federal
Flood forecasting
Flood events affected over 40 million people in the U.S. in the past decade, and they can impact every state in the country. The need for real-time predictions and forecasting is critical, which is why CGI Federal’s innovation center developed a flood forecasting prototype in partnership with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The partners have created the building blocks for an artificial intelligence- based flood prediction and modeling platform.
The flood forecasting work is part of a broader partnership with the university and the Lafayette Consolidated Government
to build a community-wide, multifaceted
digital transformation effort. CGI has committed to creating 1,000 digital media and transformation jobs in the Lafayette community and is working with the university to create agile capstone and internship programs for graduating seniors.
Although the platform concentrates on flood events, the company said the same approach can be used for other applications.
FireEye
Protecting election infrastructure
FireEye applied its intelligence-based Mandiant Managed Defense cybersecurity solution to detect and prevent incidents that could affect U.S. election infrastructure at the state and local level. Blending technology, threat intelligence and human expertise, the solution continually updates counties with the most current threat indicators for real-time detection.
The company leveraged over a decade of experience and its work with state and federal agencies, including Indiana, the Department of Homeland Security and the Election Assistance Commission. The solution began as a pilot project with seven Indiana counties and has now expanded to all 92 counties in the state.
“FireEye has helped us address both detection and prevention with the context needed to act quickly as needed,” said Connie Lawson, Indiana’s secretary of state and chief elections officer.
Hughes Network Systems
High-throughput satellite services
Natural disasters often test the limits
of first responders’ communications systems. Hughes Network Systems seeks to fortify those systems by creating
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