CenturyLink wins DHS cybersecurity service contract

CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) has won a task order from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of Cybersecurity and Communications to provide Intrusion Prevention Security Services, known as EINSTEIN 3 Accelerated (E³A) protections, to U.S. federal civilian agencies. 

The service provider was issued the one-year task order under a four-year indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract for EINSTEIN cybersecurity services that was previously awarded to CenturyLink in March 2013.

Federal agencies will be able to better arm themselves against cyber threats because the DHS EINSTEIN program uses network traffic patterns indicating known or suspected malicious cyber activity.

Under the terms of the agreement with DHS, the service provider will deliver additional managed security services and cybersecurity capabilities that will be integrated into the current CenturyLink E³A service, which it said is the first E³A intrusion prevention capability to achieve initial operating capability from DHS. 

Some of the other benefits of the EINSTEIN program is it provides advanced email filtering and web Domain Name System spoofing protections, as well as signature-based intrusion detection, prevention and mitigation services to participating federal agencies under the guidance and oversight of DHS.

Winning this task order will enable CenturyLink to prove that it has the right tools to respond to the growing cybersecurity threats on the federal government. It also shows that the service provider continues to capitalize on the foundation built by Diana Gowen, the former senior vice president and general manager, public sector, CenturyLink, built before retiring earlier this year.

During a previous interview with FierceTelecom, Gowen said that "cybersecurity and anything that has to do with hosting, colocation and managed services" are some of the new frontiers that service providers are going to have to tackle for their government agency customers.

For more:
- see the release

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