MeriTalk compiles a weekly roundup of contracts and other industry activity. Here’s what happened this week in the Federal Information Technology community.
CSRA Acquires NES Associates
CSRA announced the acquisition of NES Associates, an IT service provider with expertise in enterprise networking, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and application architecture, with military and Federal government experience. “I’m pleased we have closed on our first acquisition as a public company,” said CSRA President and CEO Larry Prior. “NES Associates will bring us innovative network engineering capabilities as we pursue large IT modernization opportunities in upcoming years, another example of how we live our tagline, ‘Think Next. Now.’ ”
“CSRA is a perfect fit for NES,” said NES founder and CEO Andy Gomer. “Our network engineering capabilities matched extremely well with CSRA’s opportunities and resources. Our companies have highly compatible cultures and a shared focus on serving our citizens and warfighters. We are very excited to continue to serve our customers’ missions with so much added capability.”
ARA Gets Army Contract for Sensor Prototypes
The U.S. Army recently issued a $49.5 million contract to Applied Research Associates, a research and engineering company based in Albuquerque, N.M. Under the five-year contract, ARA will conduct research and development relating to sensor prototypes. The company will also test, model, and run simulation tests for different hardware and software.
Symantec Announces Plans to Acquire Fireglass
Symantec on July 6 announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire Israel-based Fireglass, which provides browser-isolation tools to combat ransomware, malware, and phishing threats. “Integrating Fireglass’ isolation technology with Symantec’s existing endpoint, email and secure Web gateway solutions could reduce security events by as much as 70 percent, while virtually eliminating advanced threats spread by Web browsing or email content,” said Greg Clark, Symantec CEO. “Isolation will become a core component in the design of cyber defense architectures for the cloud generation who face the reality of an encrypted Internet and the crisis inherent in email and Web-delivered attacks. The ability for the security team to take an aggressive stance on unknown websites and questionable attachments without causing chaos for a company’s users and IT help desk is now a reality. Isolation is a key element of securing the cloud generation and is even a productivity gain for both the end user and security operations center.”