Harris gets cyber support contract from military

Adm. Mike Mullen

On May 20, Harris Corporation of Melbourne, FL - an international communications and information technology company - announced that it had been awarded a $12 million Enterprise Security Support (ESS) prime contract by the U.S. Air Force to secure the command and control systems of Headquarters Air Mobility Command (AMC).

Harris will deliver mission-critical security support to 13 information technology systems essential to U.S. national and global interests. System and network security support will include system certification and accreditation, network penetration testing, secure code validation, Department of Defense (DoD) Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process (DIACAP) document creation and validation, and host-based system auditing.

“Harris has been a trusted information assurance provider to the Air Mobility Command for more than a decade, supporting vital missions and humanitarian relief at home and around the world,” said Mike Deloney, vice president of Air Force Programs at Harris’ IT Services. “Working in close partnership with our customer, we will relentlessly counter any threat to the security of the AMC's key command and control information systems.”

On May 19, Harris announced the company would be creating a new 140,000-square-foot cyber integration center in the mid-Atlantic region to provide government and commercial customers an array of services in a trusted environment.

Dale Meyerrose, vice president and general manager for Harris' cyber division - who served as the chief information officer for the U.S. intelligence community before joining the company last year - said the center would draw on Harris' experience to offer unique infrastructure hosting and cloud services to help government and commercial address evolving challenges in the $10 billion cyber market.

This contract is just one of many issued by the military, which highlight how serious it is getting about cyber space. GSN: Government Security News recently reported on a series of undertakings by the government to ensure America’s cyber security for the future. 

On May 27, while speaking at the 2010 graduation of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff emphasized the essential role of cyber warfare and security in the future, stating that cyberspace, “will change how we fight” over the next 20 years.

Mullen called cyberspace “a global common in which we do not enjoy unmatched advantage, where international norms are the easiest to flout without consequence, and upon which our entire way of life depends” and he advised the airman and women to “stay open to new ideas” within the cyber realm and to help in shaping and leading the military as he confronts this growing challenge.

“It’s going to affect every single leader that is here, in every single warfare area … in the future,” he stated. “So we are all going to have to be a whole lot smarter and better in those areas.

“It’s pretty scary stuff,” Mullen said of the cyber threat. “And it needs to continue to be addressed very, very rapidly.”