Last week, Dan Smith, Vice President of ManTech’s Federal Security Solutions Division, participated in a panel discussion on the CDM DEFEND contract that was hosted by Washington Technology.
CDM DEFEND, administered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is the primary vehicle used by federal agencies to upgrade the cybersecurity of their networks and systems.
Congress established the CDM program to “provide adequate, risk-based, and cost-effective cybersecurity and more efficiently allocate cybersecurity resources.”
Under the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program, sensors continuously search for real-time anomalies, known threats, and evidence of cyberattacks. They then report this data to a centralized dashboard, which enables network managers to quickly view, prioritize and solve potential problems across the network.
ManTech, having played a strategic role in CDM from its inception in Phase 1, announced this fall we had been selected as the prime contractor to provide all 4 phases of CDM capabilities and support to the nine agencies in CDM Group E.
The Breakfast Briefing
Washington Technology’s breakfast briefing on December 14 aimed to educate suppliers on how they could prepare their solutions for inclusion on DHS’s Approved Products List (APL).
It’s this comprehensive list of cybersecurity tools from which the prime systems integrators on the CDM DEFEND contracts can choose best-in-class solutions and/or leverage the solutions already in use at the agencies.
Government speakers including Niki Lane, Acquisition and Requirements Management Section Chief for DHS and Willie Crenshaw, Service Executive, Governance Risk and Compliance, Office of the CIO, NASA, educated the audience of more than 150 about the CDM DEFEND program, as well as the federal government’s overall approach to cybersecurity and CDM.
ManTech’s Dan Smith was then joined by other industry players to discuss their joint approach to this critical federal cybersecurity work and explain how potential vendors could best communicate and collaborate with them.
Said Smith, “The key is to view cybersecurity as a continuing process, rather than as a checklist of items to be implemented merely for compliance. What ManTech brings to the table is an emphasis on flexibility. Because we are vendor-agnostic, we can work with agencies’ existing solutions to craft the best cybersecurity framework for them, while still fulfilling the federal mandate for CDM.”
That said, the prime systems integrators on these contracts for CDM DEFEND communicate and share best practices and lessons learned from their experiences with Phases 1 and 2.
Said Smith, “Part of our job is to recommend or use tools that we’ve already seen be successful…or that we’ve seen other primes be successful with.”
For more information on ManTech’s work with CDM DEFEND Group E, please contact Dan Smith at: [email protected]
Dan Smith discussing ManTech's approach to CDM