IronNet has signed an initial federal contract to provide cybersecurity services for the US Navy’s Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA).
NAVSEA is the largest of the US Navy’s five “systems commands.”
This contract was signed after finishing a successful pilot programme that offered the IronNet Collective Defence Platform to NAVSEA.
IronNet will be responsible for enhancing the cybersecurity protection as well as prevention of third-party and supply chain cyber risk across the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Defence Industrial Base (DIB) programme.
This cybersecurity support is in line with the efforts of DoD to help DIB entities to report information as well as share anonymised cyber threat indicators which are considered important in alerting the government and others to have a better mechanism to counter threat actor activity.
The IronNet Collective Defence Platform will allow each contractor enlisted in the NAVSEA DIB programne to boost visibility of threats on the network.
Furthermore, the platform will interconnect them in real-time under a private IronNet Collective Defence Community for NAVSEA.
IronNet founder, CEO general (retired) Keith Alexander said: “The IronNet Collective Defense Platform gives the Navy a best-in-class solution, enabling threat intelligence gained in one environment to be crowdsourced anonymously and at network speed among other organisations, especially smaller ones with fewer resources for identifying and assessing threats quickly.
“This initial contract, which has an annual recurring revenue (ARR) value of $1.2m to IronNet, includes 17 DIB customers and should help us to establish a base with a branch of the US military upon which we are working to expand.”
The pilot programme showed that small- and medium-sized businesses under the DIB programme particularly are potentially vulnerable to cyber threats.
The Collective Defence mechanism to DIB cybersecurity is intended to ensure that DIB entities do not have to safeguard their networks separately.
Under the secure Collective Defence platform, the entities will be able to pool resources, including the work of cyber analysts across firms.
This approach is considered important as DIB faced a 263% increase in cybersecurity vulnerabilities since 2016.
The platform is built on an advanced network detection and response (NDR) solution that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to boost the visibility of the threat environment while bolstering detection efficacy in a network setting via automated correlations-based detections.
Serving as an early warning system, the IronNet Collective Defence Platform bolsters network security via correlated alerting, automated triage, and extended hunt support.
Recently, IronNet updated its platform to bolster alert fidelity and analyst workflow by improving embedded risk scoring for easier prioritisation of alerts.
These improvements lead to significantly cutting down alert loads and false positives, as well as provide shortened mean time to investigation.
