Christine Thropp
IBM will provide the U.S. Agency for International Development with cybersecurity-related services under a five-year contract with initial funding of $26 million.
The company said Wednesday its multidisciplinary team will support USAID’s Cybersecurity Protection and Response program in the Europe and Eurasia region by providing capacity building, incident response, program management, and other services.
Efforts are aimed at boosting the assistance USAID provides to host government agencies and critical infrastructure operators to help them in identifying, detecting, responding to and/or protecting against cyber attacks.
“For USAID host countries to benefit from [information technology] modernization efforts, they must incorporate cyber threat mitigation and capacity-building into their program design and implementation,” said Alice Fakir, partner, lead of cybersecurity services, U.S. federal market for IBM Consulting.
She expressed belief that cybersecurity is a global development challenge and welcomed the opportunity for IBM to help USAID integrate cybersecurity into civilian IT infrastructure of host countries.
