US DHS awards Einstein 3 Accelerated contract to CenturyLink

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded a service expansion contract to a global communications, hosting, cloud and IT services company CenturyLink to deliver Einstein 3 Accelerated (E3A) protections programme to US federal civilian agencies.

Under the deal, CenturyLink will provide E3A services to the departments and agencies, which have access to other internet service providers and hence not being able to use critical cybersecurity protections such as E3A.

The federal civilian agencies are not being able to have access to E3A, since their current internet service provider is not capable to deliver critical cybersecurity protections.

In 2013, CenturyLink was awarded a contract to provide Einstein cybersecurity protections to its customers.

Via E3A, the company has been delivering different services such as web domain name system protections, advanced email filtering and signature-based intrusion prevention security solutions to the federal civilian agencies, who receive internet service from CenturyLink.

CenturyLink senior vice-president and general manager Tim Meehan said: "CenturyLink is excited to be able to offer Einstein cybersecurity protections to more federal agencies.

"CenturyLink’s E3A service was the first to achieve initial operating capability from DHS and the first fully operational E3A system to begin actively providing cybersecurity services to federal civilian agencies’ end-users."

DHS expects to boost the country’s defense system against increasing rate of cyber threats and fulfil US secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson’s directive to make E3A protections accessible to all federal civilian agencies by the year end.

DHS’s Einstein programme works on the basis of network traffic patterns that point out known or unknown harmful cyber activities and federal agencies work on those feedbacks to protect their IT systems.

Einstein features a mixture of commercial hardware and software, government-developed software as well as commercially available managed security services that are improved by information provided by DHS.

Through E3A and DHS Enhanced Cybersecurity Services (ECS) programmes, CenturyLink offers security and information through its carrier-class network to various US companies and federal government agencies.

US companies can protect their IT systems from unauthorised access, data exfiltration and exploitation with the help of DHS ECS programme.