Northrop Continues Integration Activities for Cybercom’s Unified Platform; George Franz Quoted

Northrop Grumman is continuing work to support the Unified Platform designed to handle the U.S. Cyber Command’s operations and provide standardized big data and cybersecurity tools across defense components, Fifth Domain reported Saturday.

Northrop secured a potential $54.6M contract from the U.S. Air Force in October 2018 to build the platform and is now working on a “software factory” aimed at integrating capabilities into the system.

As part of a separate $24M contract awarded in April called Cyber Enterprise Services, Northrop, Accenture and three other firms may compete for experimentation-based work focused on furthering the development of multiple cyber platforms for the consolidated system.

At a conference, George Franz, cybersecurity lead at Accenture Federal Services’ national security business, said that after receiving a request, a CES firm has a “very short period of time to actually develop an analytic or a tool.”

Chris Valentino, vice president for cyber solutions at Northrop, told Fifth Domain that the company's role as system coordinator for the Unified Platform effort requires it to implement agile practices to accelerate the development and deployment of mission capabilities.

He noted that the project is aimed at establishing a holistic environment with capabilities that “integrate different types of data sources and then deliver that back out to the mission force.”

According to the original award, work on the Unified Platform is slated to conclude by October 2021.