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Raytheon Wins US Civilian Cyber Contract Worth $1 Billion
Tokolosh writes: Raytheon is a company well-known in military-industrial and political circles, but not so much for software, networking and cybersecurity. That has not stopped the DHS awarding it a $1 billion, five year contract to help more than 100 civilian agencies manage their computer security. Raytheon said DHS selected it to be the prime contractor and systems integrator for the agency's Network Security Deployment (NSD) division, and its National Cybersecurity Protection System (NCPS). The contract runs for five years, but some orders could be extended for up to an additional 24 months, it said. Dave Wajsgras, president of Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services, said the company had invested over $3.5 billion in recent years to expand its cybersecurity capabilities. He said cybersecurity incidents had increased an average of 66 percent a year worldwide between 2009 and 2014. As you might expect, Raytheon spends heavily on political contributions and lobbying.
This is good news. Sure the $1bn is going down the drain, but at least it's not going to improve the DHS's effectiveness. That's not as good as abolishing the DHS, but it's a start.
So think of it as $1bn well spent...
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This sounds like a lot, but it really is a relative pittance to what these types of government contractors were getting 10-20 years ago. I live in the D.C. area and the big defense IT contractors have been laying off staff like crazy. It used to be if you had clearance you could write your own ticket.
Retiring bureaucrats and old generals couldn't go suck the government teet for more money from a small security firm...it just looks better if they go and work for Raytheon, so, Raytheon may not have the name in security...but, it does have the niche for hiring old bureaucrats and ex-military!
If their cybersecurity system is as good as the other software they produce, we don't have to worry about the cybersecurity getting any better :) It'll be both old fashioned, unusable and inefficient...
If your curious
http://www.raytheoncyber.com/
love is just extroverted narcissism
Why don't we just streamline things and stop sending our tax money to the government and start sending it to all these military defense businesses? Surely this money could be better spent by agencies staffing their own employees. One billion dollars could hire a lot of people, but instead majority of that will go into the pockets of big business moguls at the taxpayers expense.
I don't really agree with the summary. I've always associated Raytheon with software. I'm a meteorologist. The US National Weather Service uses a software suite called AWIPS for many of their operations. AWIPS is created and maintained by Raytheon. I've always thought that, because my tax dollars pay Raytheon to do this, the software should be open source and publicly available. Sadly, that's not the case, and it's virtually impossible to learn to use the same software in many NWS offices without actually working for the NWS. Thankfully, AWIPS will be replaced by the (partly) open source AWIPS II. But I've always thought this contract with Raytheon was pretty shady and bad for taxpayers. As for why Raytheon got the contract rather than the NWS using GEMPAK (the standard for some of their national offices), it may well be the explanation given in the summary that lobbying won out.
Anyone claiming that because Raytheon isn't a well known name in software, networking, cyber security that this contract was awarded for cronyism, lobbying etc, has clearly never managed a large governmental project like this one is and knows nothing of how these projects are awarded. These projects are not looking for the prime contractor to be technically proficient in any of these technical fields but to have the best project management skills & to farm the technical parts out to subcontractors/suppliers.
That /. admins have promoted such a basic misunderstanding of what the issues are speaks to how far /. has fallen.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Just so I can say "I told you so." Just from the summary, $1 billion really isn't enough for the scope of work that has to be involved. I suspect they'll burn through that in the first year and come back looking for more. I also wouldn't be holding my breath for anything useful to ever actually get done. Although, as bad as civilian agencies are at security, they might actually accidentally improve the security at a few of them.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is why we must elect a young, smart, well-educated politician with multi-cultural background and compelling life-story to Presidency. Someone, who knows, how to use a computer himself. Who is not beholden to KKKorporate interests. Someone loved and respected overseas. Someone, who cares... Someone, who thrills men and whom women can imagine finding in their showers and be excited, rather than frightened. Someone, who is serious about ending Washington's culture of corruption !
Yes we can!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Raytheon also employs over 60,000 people in high tech, high paying positions.
"Raytheon is a company well-known in military-industrial and political circles, but not so much for software, networking and cybersecurity"
Horse crap, Raytheon was at the leading edge of cyberspace decades before anyone else ever heard of it.
That "taxes paid for it, taxpayers own it" has never really applied to anything. Sure, the "taxpayers" own it in the sense that it's a national asset owned by all citizens collectively, but not in the "you can get a free copy" sense.
In any case, there's no "ownership" to speak of here: as soon as the computer folks started "leasing" computers and software, (e.g. IBM) you were paying only for the "right to use" (i.e. a license). Just as you don't get unlimited rights and source code when you fork out a few hundred bucks for a copy of windows, neither does the government.
The government rarely pays the *full cost* of development: usually, the vendor is leveraging some past experience, software libraries, etc. so the product being generated for the government is a mish-mash of old code and new. Furthermore, the vendors claim (whether justifiably or not is hard to tell) that they are giving the government a discounted price, in exchange for being able to retain most of the rights.
Software and technology that is developed by a educational institution (not the case here, with Raytheon), likely falls under the Bayh-Dole act: the institution retains the rights and the government gets a fully paid, royalty free, non-exclusive license for use for government purposes. Again, this does not mean "anyone can request the source code", it means that for a "government purpose" they can use it.
I don't get the summary. Large government contractors like this just sub out and/or hire who they need to. It has nothing to do with cronyism. Granted, we could discuss why the same handful of companies get all government contracts...but that is a separate issue.
See subject & AFATDS -> http://www.raytheon.com/capabi...
* I know this since my brother used it during the IRAQ conflict (when he was a O2/O3 rank - now's he's "field-grade" & either a Major or a Colonel now...) - he not only used it, but had to debug/troubleshoot it as well.
APK
P.S.=> They're HUGE on software - @ least for the military's purposes... apk
Based on the posts, I think people don't realize that Raytheon owns computer security firm Websense through a joint venture, a deal where Raytheon merged their own $400M valuation commercial cybersecurity business into the Websense to create a half a billion dollar commercial cyber business. That doesn't even cover their existing government networks, communications and cyber business which is a very different animal altogether. Therefore, the statements that the firm somehow doesn't have any software and cybersecurity chops as stated by the OP is a bit absurd.
... to contemplate going back. As a SW Eng. who has long desired to work (and invested time to learn & build skills) in AppSec / InfoSec. I worked for a company acquired by Raytheon. They botched the acquisition / transition / assimilation (an HR person actually used that word in one person's exit interview) pretty badly. Pretty much everyone jumped ship (I know, shocker ... right?!?!?). Those still there are looking to jump ship.
Can't say I'm overly happy to have my tax money go in this direction.
They will build an air gap network for you by re-using JLENS. Boom! Made JLENS useful and made a billion dollars.
I used to work for Raytheon. I remember an email coming from upper management right before the US 2012 election suggesting employees vote for certain candidates that are friendly to the company.
Raytheon has been doing defense & intelligence community security software for as long as I can remember....
Here is a good example of some of their work, which was quite a few years ahead of commercial sector equivalent work in tools like Niksun or Netwitness
yup Raytheon went out and bought the tools recently, the shuffle at websense is still causing issues which hopefully they will figure out SOON!!.
as always it depends on who is managing the deployment and their expertise level. the tools themselves are pretty good.
FAA and FBI is what I seem to remember... things that drag on for years and years and years and the agencies are still running a lot of the creaky old software they were trying to modernize.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?