Denim Group of San Antonio, TX announced on January 21 that it has been awarded a Phase 1 Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) contract to accelerate distributed software delivery to Air Force operators. The Air Force will implement Denim Group’s vulnerability resolution platform, ThreadFix, to integrate DevSecOps functions to software builds and deployments that will enable the operators to adapt to missions in real time and support continuous accreditation processes like Authority to Operate (ATO).
“The award of this contract is an acknowledgement by the Department of
Defense and the Air Force of the need to accelerate the software support of
impending missions and of the requirement to build software more rapidly,” said
Denim Group Principal and former Air Force cyber officer John Dickson.
“Pressures to rapidly build and deploy software drive the need to deliver new
capabilities through DevSecOps pipelines. As an added complication, each piece
of software delivered must achieve ATO prior to its implementation, a process
that can take months, or years, to ensure it will not compromise national
security.”
ThreadFix has been used by defense and intelligence organizations for
the past three years as a component of their toolchains to automate capability
development. It has also been implemented into the Risk Management Framework
(RMF) Assessment and Authorization (A&A) processes for updating or creating
applications. Having ThreadFix integrated into the DevOps tool chain will help
avoid delays in accreditation that can last 12 to 24 months. These streamlined
operations will reduce ATO approval processes for agencies to assure mission
capabilities are deployed to respond to conflict at any time, or location.
Under the awarded AFWERX SBIR contract, capabilities will be added to ThreadFix to support Air Force software factories and programs that perform DevSecOps functions for operators. During the first three months of the contract Denim Group will work with various innovative Air Force programs, including Platform One and Unified Platform, to drive continuous software delivery, feedback and learning. The need to inject agility and responsiveness into environments that have traditionally struggled to keep pace with modern development approaches will only continue to increase in the coming decade. Denim Group is poised to support this evolution.
Source: Denim Group
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