Cyberspace Operations Integration Platform (COIP) Cyber Innovation Challenge

The Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology (ASA(ALT)), Army Cyber Command and Second Army (ARCYBER & 2A), and the Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) are initiating a Cyber Innovation Challenge to investigate advanced software-based prototype solutions. The intent of the challenge is to evaluate the technical feasibility of an integrated cyberspace operations platform. A cyberspace operations integration platform solution will provide functionality to support command and control orchestration through the integration of various security technologies in the areas (not exhaustive) of attack, sensing, and warning (AS&W), incident response, incident handling, analysis, reporting, automated workflows, threat intelligence, and vulnerability management. Cyberspace operations center personnel are presented with myriad sources of security, intelligence, and operational data; the desired platform must enable cyber mission forces and security analysts to understand and visualize these feeds, and plan and execute synchronized missions (e.g., threat mitigation) through coordinated and increasingly automated workflows. This capability provides transparent mission execution improving mission effectiveness and reinforces accountability. While existing Army tools provide many of the aforementioned functions, the desired solution centralizes the functions and streamlines the steps required between threat identification and threat mitigation, and operational planning to operational execution. This is accomplished by linking toolsets to include cyber threat detection, user access management, firewall management, Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM), Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), and asset management. To achieve these results and be operational at Army scale, a solution system must be horizontally scalable and deploy on existing infrastructure. Further, it must sit at the middle of the cyber security stack of solutions by integrating tool application programming interface (APIs), exposing their functions in a centralized manner for a single point of execution. Central to this concept is incorporating incident response plans, threat intelligence, malware analysis, policies, and alerts into actionable and automated tasks. A cyberspace operations platform is not meant to replace big data and threat intelligence solutions; it is not intended to identify anomalies through advanced analytics. Instead, it stands to enable efficient and effective operational tasks based on the aggregate functionality across the many security tools. The Cyber Innovation Challenge requirement will be released through the Consortium for Command, Control, and Communications in Cyberspace (C5) utilizing Other Transaction Authority (OTA) as the framework to promote increased industry engagement with Government. There will not be a formal industry day to kick-off this challenge. Interested parties may obtain further details regarding this challenge from C5 at http://c5technologies.org/e. This is not a Request for Proposals or Request for Quote but for planning purposes only. A contract award will not be made from this announcement. The purpose of this announcement is to provide members of industry advanced notification of Government intent.