The United States Cyber Command’s (CYBERCOM) Cyber Procurement Office awarded a nearly $60 million contract to Sealing Technologies for the company to continue to produce a successful prototype of a hunt-forward solution for CYBERCOM’s hunt-forward operations, the company announced April 21.
The award comes with three base years and will support the Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF) – a CYBERCOM team with both offensive and defensive capabilities. A “hunt-forward” team was recently revealed to have been tasked with hardening Ukrainian systems ahead of the Russian invasion of the country.
“Bringing a working hunt forward system to U.S. Cyber Command warfighters in just a few months was no small feat,” SealingTech CEO Ed Sealing said in the release. “We are driven by the mission. With this pursuit … SealingTech leveraged our knowledge, experience, and innovation to rapidly create, test, improve and deploy a prototype that will help U.S. cyber defenders more effectively secure cyberspace.”
CYBERCOM Commander Gen. Paul Nakasone told the Senate Armed Services Committee that his service branch had sent a hunt-forward team to Ukraine towards the end of 2021 to help the nation build up cyber defenses. He said this move has been “integral” to the United States’ response to the Russian invasion.
Sealing Technology’s “hunt-forward” solution kit will provide CNMF with support for automated deployments, configurations, and data flows for cyber ops. The company said the solution was also designed to be modular and to fit in self-contained units that can fly on commercial aircrafts.
The program will be managed from the company side by Angie Landress, who will be responsible for managing the team building, delivering, integrating, and supporting a “total cyber hunt solution” for CNMF.
Landress said the kits are built to be modular to provide flexibility depending on mission requirements and allow them to be “optimized for enhanced performance characteristics” – essentially, to make sure that the team has what they need whether they’re on a hunt-forward mission in Ukraine or elsewhere around the world.
