Booz Allen Hamilton has been awarded a follow-on production other transaction authority (OTA) agreement for at-scale deployment of Thunderdome, the Defense Information Systems Agency’s (DISA) zero-trust network access and application security architecture. The single-award contract has a one-year base period of performance, with four one-year option periods. Under this agreement, Booz Allen will help to move DISA, the Fourth Estate, and its mission partners toward a zero-trust architecture.
Booz Allen will broadly implement and operate Thunderdome’s zero-trust network access and application security architecture, which will harden Department of Defense (DoD) networks and help warfighters defend against adversarial activity by employing network and resource access tools along with segmentation technologies. DISA’s Thunderdome capabilities align with the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity and the DoD Zero Trust Strategy and Roadmap.
“The at-scale production of Thunderdome will be a critical step toward moving DoD forward in its zero-trust journey,” said Kelly Rozumalski, a senior vice president leading Booz Allen’s National Cyber defense business. “Our team successfully demonstrated the use of commercial technologies to help meet many of DoD’s zero-trust implementation goals, and our internal zero-trust investments helped accelerate our ability to bring innovative solutions to complex challenges. This agreement further establishes Booz Allen as the premier zero-trust service provider to federal agencies.”
This award follows Booz Allen’s successful delivery of the Thunderdome prototype earlier this year. In January 2022, DISA awarded an initial OTA agreement to Booz Allen for the execution of a Thunderdome prototype, a zero-trust security solution to modernize and strengthen DoD’s cybersecurity terrain. During the prototype phase, DISA successfully onboarded over 1,800 users to Thunderdome and implemented conditional access for remote and on-premise users. In addition, Booz Allen achieved an Authority to Operate (ATO) for Thunderdome on DISA’s unclassified and classified network.
“At-scale adoption of Thunderdome is a huge step toward zero trust and, ultimately, mitigating malicious activity,” said Chris Pymm, DISA’s Thunderdome portfolio manager. “The success of the prototype proved that commercial-off-the-shelf technologies can be integrated effectively to accelerate zero trust within DoD. Not only did Thunderdome’s prototype improve security in evaluated operational use cases, it also added efficiency to pilot users across the DoD Information Network.”
DISA’s Thunderdome prototype proved that commercial technologies, including Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), Software Defined-Wide Area Networks/Customer Edge Security Stack (CESS), and Application Security Stacks, can improve both security and network performance in an existing enterprise environment. Thunderdome is a set of technologies integrated with, but not dependent upon, each other.
“We are proud of our partnership with DISA to successfully deliver the Thunderdome prototype,” said Imran Umar, a vice president spearheading Booz Allen’s zero-trust practice. “The Thunderdome prototype was composed of innovative technologies to demonstrate, with real users, that they will work together to deliver the tenets of zero trust on both classified and unclassified networks. We look forward to our continued partnership with DISA to take this solution into full production.”
Booz Allen is a member of the Government Technology & Services Coalition, a non-profit organization for government contractors in the homeland security market.
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