The Defense Information Systems Agency deployed the Thunderdome zero trust program to 15 sites in 2023 and is preparing to field the initiative to 60 additional sites this year, Federal News Network reported Friday.
DISA has also finalized the contracting process to support the U.S. Coast Guard’s network security improvement efforts through Thunderdome.
In July 2023, Booz Allen Hamilton received a follow-on other transaction authority agreement from DISA for the Thunderdome project.
“We just completed the contracting effort to get underway with the Coast Guard work. There are some site surveys and things that need to be done, but that will be additive work on top of the planned work,” Brian Hermann, director of the cybersecurity and analytics directorate at DISA, told FNN.
According to the publication, the follow-on OTA deal is valued at approximately $1.86 billion.
Hermann noted that DISA will advance the rollout by focusing on organizations that are already part of DoDNet, which supports users from DISA and the Defense Technical Information Center, among others.
“Over time, as they come on board to DoDNet, they will get the Thunderdome architecture as a basic part of their commodity IT,” the DISA official remarked. “That’s helpful for them and it’s helpful for the department because then we know that those organizations will have achieved certain elements of zero trust target state, which we’re all required to achieve by the end of fiscal 2027. So we expect there will be more organizations that come on board Thunderdome.”
The Thunderdome project consists of four components: customer security stacks, software-defined wide area networking, secure access service edge capability and application security stacks.
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