After a long fight, Raytheon wins $1 billion cybersecurity contract with Homeland Security

EINSTEIN is a DHS tool defending and providing situational awareness to federal networks.

Finally ending a long battle over a major contract, Raytheon won — again — a $1 billion, five-year cybersecurity contract from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for a project called DOMino, short for Development, Operations and Maintenance.

The contract was first awarded in 2015 but was quickly protested by Northrup Grumman. After another protest in 2016 alleged flawed evaluations and conflicts of interest because Raytheon hired a former DHS official, this latest award, made June 9, represents a significant win for Raytheon’s cyber business.

The Massachusetts-based company, long one of the world’s largest military contractors, will be “the prime contractor and systems integrator” to defend the .gov domain in support of DHS’s National Protection and Programs Directorate, a company press release explained Monday. The project tasks them with defending more than 100 federal government departments and agencies as part of DHS’s next generation National Cybersecurity Protection System (NCPS).

NCPS is known operationally as EINSTEIN, a DHS tool defending and providing situational awareness to federal networks. EINSTEIN, currently on its third iteration, has been operational during some major breaches against the U.S. government including the largest ever at the Office of Personnel Management.

The system was first deployed in 2003. A 2016 Government Accountability Office report concluded the NCPS “is partially, but not fully, meeting its stated system objectives.” Then-Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson defended the program, saying it was improving capabilities, defenses and scope.

Raytheon’s stock has jumped about 25 percent since Donald Trump’s victory in November’s presidential election. Cyber sales in the company are growing faster than other segments as Raytheon aims to win big enterprise customers outside of the federal government.

Government

• FBI officials say AI is bolstering adversaries, emphasizing need to focus on cyber basics, patching

• Feds accuse China of ‘systematic’ distillation of U.S. AI models

• CIA’s Michael Ellis says cyber intelligence is changing how the agency operates

• The G7 tells industry to hurry up and prep for post-quantum encryption

Technology

• European parliament members call for slowdown of Serbia’s EU entry over spyware use

• FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

• Pegasus, NoviSpy variant spyware found on devices of Serbian activists

• Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

Threats

• Chinese espionage groups swarm to exploit triple-link chain of zero-days

• Microsoft discloses two actively exploited zero-days among 974 vulnerabilities

• Russian national extradited to US for alleged involvement in bank-account takeover scheme

• Attackers exploit zero-days in consistently besieged SonicWall product

Policy

• Whistleblower says USPS deploying new, ‘untested’ IT systems governing mail-in ballots

• ‘Watershed 250’ test program in Texas looks to private sector for water cybersecurity help

• Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

• Cyber threats nudge Trump to sign executive order on foreign equipment in U.S. energy infrastructure