14 DAY TRIAL // NATO’s infrastructure, which includes more than 22,000 civilian and military employees, will benefit from a protection worth €58 Million ($75.8 Million) as part of the new Computer Incident Response Capability, Full Operational Capability (NCIRC FOC) project.
Seven companies from all over the world participated in a bid and after the evaluation of both the technical and financial factors, the Italian firm Finmeccanica, through UK-based SELEX ELSAG and VEGA, and its partner, the Northrup Grumman Corporation team, obtained the contract.
The company will be in charge of designing, testing and implementing cyber defense systems, not only for the protection of NATO itself, but also for its allies in case of attacks.
“The NCIRC FOC project is a direct result of NATO nations’commitment to improve NATO’s capabilities to detect, assess, prevent, defend and recover in case of a cyber attack against systems of critical importance to the Alliance ,” Ambassador Gabor Iklody, head of the Emerging Security Challenges Division at NATO HQ, said.
“This award is an essential step towards delivering these capabilities by the end of 2012.”
On the other hand, the contractor will have a lot of work cut out, but according to SELEX ELSAG representatives they seem prepared for the task.
“We are proud to be selected for this important NATO project to robustly counter the ever increasing and sophisticated threat from cyber attack. The threats in cyberspace are continually evolving, and the NCIRC FOC project will deliver capabilities in various increments to significantly boost NATO’s abilities to face the evolving threats,” Project Manager Richard Cooper explained.
This is the largest cyber defense contract ever signed by NATO and the timing couldn’t be better, especially with all the threats that target the infrastructures of military organizations.