The Department of Labor awarded a sole-source contract for cybersecurity support, including continuous monitoring, incident response, setting security policies and creating training regimens, among other services.

Accenture Federal Services has been working with Labor's cybersecurity teams for more than five years and the recent contract award re-ups the collaboration for at least another year.

The contract has a performance period of up to three years, with a 12-month base and four six-month option periods. The documentation accompanying the award includes a ceiling for the contract, however all compensation information has been redacted. The award notice does say contracting officials expect the costs to be similar to pricing in the recently expired contract.

Labor officials cited Accenture's tenure with the department as the main justification for issuing a sole-source award.

"Accenture holds over eight years DOL experience with five years specific to supporting DOL's cybersecurity program and their continued support services are critical to the secure operations of DOL's most critical assets," the document states. "Using a different contractor to execute the work will significantly degrade security safeguards of DOL's mission critical IT services given their unfamiliarity with DOL's enterprise infrastructure and overall operating environment."

The old Accenture contract expired on Jan. 31.

The contract covers 12 specific service areas ranging from operations to maintenance to training. These include:

  • compliance oversight (continuous monitoring);
  • computer security incident response;
  • IT security policy and guidance development;
  • program analysis;
  • security integration activities;
  • computer security training;
  • plans of actions and milestones management;
  • periodic and annual FISMA reports;
  • personally identifiable information and privacy;
  • NIST Special Publication 800-53 implementation guidance and oversight;
  • security architecture; and
  • common security configurations.

A copy of the award documentation posted on FedBizOpps includes a detailed explanation of the work to be done in each category.

About Aaron Boyd

Aaron Boyd is an awarding-winning journalist currently serving as editor of Federal Times — a Washington, D.C. institution covering federal workforce and contracting for more than 50 years — and Fifth Domain — a news and information hub focused on cybersecurity and cyberwar from a civilian, military and international perspective.

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