(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Telecommunications provider AT&T (www.att.com) Government Solutions announced on Thursday it has signed a $5 million agreement to provide AT&T Synaptic Hosting (www.att.com/hosting), Managed Trusted IP Services (www.corp.att.com/gov/networx/mtips/index.html) and AT&T Internet Protect Service for the Federal Trade Commission (www.ftc.gov) as its primary provider of communications services.
The deal was made under the US General Services Administration Networx Universal contract vehicle for an eight year term, which includes a one-year base with seven one-year options.
AT&T Synaptic Hosting is the company’s utility computing service with managed networking, security and storage for federal government agencies that use select data centers.
The data centers act as diverse gateways to the AT&T network cloud, support large-scale computing and applications on demand via virtualized servers and deliver services across AT&T’s IDC hosting infrastructure, says AT&T.
“Managing unexpected spikes in website traffic volume and cyber attacks are key challenges for federal agencies,” says Don Herring, senior vice president of AT&T Government Solutions at AT&T Global Services. “With AT&T’s cloud-based approach to security, combined with AT&T Synaptic Hosting, AT&T can help deploy an MTIPS solution to proactively detect and diffuse security threats in our cloud before they go to the Federal Trade Commission while addressing increases in website traffic volume.”
Under the agreement, AT&T will also provide MTIPS to enhance security for the FTC network. The service is offered under the Networx Universal contract, which lets federal agencies order IP services that comply with Office of Management and Budget Memorandum 08-05.
The OMB directive calls for implementation of the Trusted Internet Connections Initiative, which requires agencies to reduce the number of connections to the public Internet and provide secure IP portals for agency traffic to and from the public Internet.
AT&T will use MTIPS to secure the FTC Internet traffic with services such as Intrusion Detection Services, Intrusion Protection Services, Incident Response, Managed Firewall Services and Anti-virus Management.
AT&T’s current pace in the deployment and certifications/approval of MTIPS will let the FTC implement MTIPS into its IP network infrastructure as part of the initial project.
AT&T Internet Protect Service is an intrusion notification application that provides information about potential real-time network attacks while they are in their early stages.
The service will give the FTC a first line of defense and an extra layer of protection to combat viruses, worms, and distributed denial of service.
Under the terms of a separate contract, AT&T is currently managing deployment of a Wide Area Network solution for the FTC, which is based on the AT&T Multiprotocol Label Switching-enabled network.
