Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM)

In the face of increasingly advanced threats, the Federal Civilian Executive Branch Agencies need enhanced visibility to prevent widespread harm to their networks and protect the services the nation depends on. Endpoint detection and response technology, EDR, provides the needed deep visibility into behaviors and activity on endpoints. Booz Allen works closely with the government and subject matter experts from our EDR technology partners to determine how we can quickly implement EDR solutions. Our collective team can procure, deploy and configure agents for thousands of endpoints in a matter of weeks instead of months. For example, one agency was able to cover 85% of their network within 30 days. Working with three EDR partners, we have provided advance monitoring, detection and remediation capabilities for almost 480,000 endpoints across five agencies. This gives unprecedented visibility into threats and vulnerabilities targeting the agency networks, transforming how stakeholders identify, assess and remediate malicious activity, jeopardizing their essential missions. 

As the steward of the nation's vast natural resources, the USDA has a workforce of 100,000 men and women in 4,500 locations protecting our country's food, agriculture, and biodiverse landscape. Each year during the summer wildfire season, that workforce number grows by 6,000 seasonal firefighters. These firefighters are onboarded to the USDA network at the beginning of the season and then off boarded at the end when they return to their home stations. This is an important security practice by restricting network access to only those who require it. The agency reduces potential attack vectors during the months when seasonal firefighters are not actively supporting USDA. However, there was a challenge that off boarding process took up to two weeks for each of those 6,000 firefighters. Working with USDA, our team implemented an automated identity lifecycle management solution. As a result, it now takes less than one hour, not weeks, for USDA staff to off board their workforce, whether seasonal or full time. Our solution replaced an outdated and inefficient system that included manual processes prone to errors. That system also included aging software that was vulnerable to cyber attacks. Now USDA has a more secure system and a centralized approach to managing its entire workforce. So now firefighters can focus on fighting fires and support staff are freed from the burden of manual processes.