Sept. 11: Pentagon Attack Gives IT Community A Common Goal

Leif Ulstrup, director of homeland security at AMS, a Fairfax, Va., government integrator, said the IT community is involved in a spate of initiatives to bolster information systems security and sharpen communications among intelligence agencies, the armed services and other federal entities. "There is an enormous amount of excitement among people to be participating," he said.

Ulstrup heads a new practice group that AMS formed to work with federal organizations likely be folded into the nascent Department of Homeland Security, including the U.S. Customs Service and the Coast Guard. The 120-person staff has expertise in IT security, network management and other disciplines.

Over the past year, AMS staff met with government officials to discuss ways to bolster federal systems security and devise

a disaster-recovery and business-continuity plan, according to Ulstrup. "We made a number of visits to [Capitol Hill and to see members of the [Bush administration," he said. "In October and November, people were still reeling [from the attacks. Now you're hearing a sense that everything has changed and that people's perspectives on what the government needs to do going forward will be different."

Federal and commercial organizations alike have taken a hard look at strategies to keep their systems up and running in the event of another terrorist attack or other catastrophe, solution providers said. "One of the shocks generated by Sept. 11 was [the need for business-continuity planning," said Dendy Young, chairman and CEO of GTSI, a Chantilly, Va.-based federal solution provider. In the wake of the attack, many GTSI customers have inquired about solutions for data backup and recovery and wireless access to their networks, Young said.

Some commercial applications also are drawing interest from public-sector clients, government integrators said. For example, a Web-based application that AMS developed for a chemical company,which uses the solution to identify hazardous materials and ways to safely handle and diffuse them,has caught the attention of various Defense Department entities and in recent months was deployed by some military agencies, Ulstrup said.

In addition, solution providers in tune with the federal government's security and disaster-recovery needs are finding subcontracting opportunities. Fairfax-based solution provider Anteon, for instance, landed a subcontracting engagement for a large Transportation Security Administration (TSA) project awarded to Unisys. An Anteon spokesman declined to give details but said the work involves integrating telecommunications and IT services within the TSA, which was spun out of the Department of Transportation after the events of Sept. 11.

Despite seeing new business opportunities, solution providers said they've had to alter their expectations about how they work with government clients. Before Sept. 11, many projects occurred at sites where government officials would oversee the integrator's every move, but that's no longer the case, said Norm Snyder, a co-founder of Conquest, an Annapolis Junction, Md., solution provider.

"The shift now is to move away from that and have the work done at the contractor [site," Snyder said, adding that such an approach saves time because the government doesn't have to provide workspace for the contractors. "I believe the real impetus now is to get it done quickly," he said.

Conquest's current projects include workstation upgrades and the deployment of new supercomputers to crunch mountains of intelligence data, according to Snyder. "The customer might ask us to do the equipment procurement, too," he said. "In the old days, they might have procured it themselves." Snyder estimated that since last September, Conquest has hired nearly 100 staff to meet the federal government's increased demand for technology solutions.

Other solution providers also report that government clients are seeking extra IT hands. Dallas Bishoff, senior managing partner at Aegisant, Columbia, Md., said the federal government is scrambling to find certified security experts and is training its internal staff and enlisting high-tech consultants. That's good news for Aegisant, one of 40 facilities designated to offer training for the Certified Information Systems Security Professional course, a vendor-independent certification for security practices. "The federal sector is far more intent on evaluating and dealing with their security issues but struggles because they are operating outside the standard three-year budget cycle," Bishoff said. "They are also more focused on enterprise architecture and how security has to translate into their organizational requirements."