cyber security

Carahsoft Technology Corp., The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider®, and QuSecure, a leader in post-quantum cryptography (PQC), announced a partnership. Under the agreement, Carahsoft will serve as QuSecure’s Master Government Aggregator®, making QuSecure’s products available to the Public Sector through Carahsoft’s reseller partners, AWS Marketplace and NASA Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V, Information Technology Enterprise Solutions – Software 2 (ITES-SW2), and OMNIA Partners contracts.

With QuSecure, Government agencies can ensure compliance with quantum mandates and regulatory requirements while swiftly securing critical data against AI and quantum computing threats, providing seamless protection without disrupting communications or uptime.

QuProtect is an all-in-one network security solution designed to empower cybersecurity leaders with a flexible and resilient framework. The platform seamlessly guides organizations through every stage, from discovery to remediation, enabling effortless crypto-agility while ensuring robust protection. Administrators gain full control over cryptography algorithms, enabling them to establish a strategic cybersecurity framework tailored to the unique needs of their organization. Compliant with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Quantum Computing Cyber Security Preparedness Act, QuProtect ensures alignment with industry standards while offering robust protection against evolving threats.

Cognizant and CrowdStrike announced a strategic partnership to drive enterprise security transformation by delivering cybersecurity services, powered by the AI-native CrowdStrike Falcon® cybersecurity platform. Cognizant will work to enable organizations to streamline security operations and threat mitigation, consolidate fragmented legacy point products, reduce the complexity of managing cybersecurity programs, and strengthen cybersecurity posture, leveraging Falcon® Next-Gen SIEM and Falcon® Cloud Security.

Organizations are continuously evolving their IT landscapes by adopting a variety of cloud services, including IaaS, SaaS, PaaS and CaaS1, which can expose them to a wider range of increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. With a growing cybersecurity skills gap and an increasingly complex threat landscape, organizations need solutions that not only transform security operations but also consolidate point products to simplify their cybersecurity environments.

"Cognizant is committed to staying at the forefront of cybersecurity innovation," said Ravi Kumar S, CEO, Cognizant. "As the enterprise digital landscape evolves, it is crucial to leverage AI for cybersecurity and cloud-native security technologies to help stay ahead of threats and ensure the resilience of our clients' infrastructure. Our partnership with CrowdStrike is another important step we are taking to continue providing our clients with some of the most advanced and effective market-leading security solutions available."

Over the past year, cloud exploitation cases have surged by 110%, while the speed and sophistication of cyberattacks continue to accelerate, with breakout times now measured in minutes. The collaboration between Cognizant and CrowdStrike combines the power of the Falcon platform with Cognizant's Neuro® Cybersecurity platform, along with threat and vulnerability management and cloud infrastructure security offerings. This approach is designed to help customers create a flexible operations framework for new technology and threats, powered by an AI-native platform rather than separate legacy tools.

"Our partnership with Cognizant delivers cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions that tackle the evolving challenges enterprises face today and tomorrow," said George Kurtz, CEO and founder, CrowdStrike. "CrowdStrike's AI-native Falcon platform with Cognizant's extensive expertise in technology transformation offers customers best-in-class protection, performance, and efficiency. Together, we will drive positive customer outcomes and enhance the security posture of organizations globally."

Carahsoft Technology, The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider®, today announced that Forescout Technologies Inc. has been named a vendor on Carahsoft’s Department of Defense (DoD) Enterprise Software Initiative (ESI) blanket purchase agreement (BPA). The BPA is signed for a five-year period of performance through April 11, 2029.

Under the agreement, Carahsoft will facilitate access to cybersecurity software products, which include software licenses, subscriptions, maintenance, support, and services from Forescout to support Information Technology (IT) operations across the DoD enterprise. 

“The addition of Forescout to the ESI contract will help propel the cybersecurity missions of numerous defense agencies,” said Craig P. Abod, Carahsoft President. “As IT networks grow in size and complexity, it is critical that defense agencies have access to the mission critical tools needed to protect every aspect of their networks. We look forward to working with our reseller partners to enhance the resilience and security of our national defense infrastructure.”

Forescout’s solutions will help DoD customers effectively mitigate risks from network-connected devices, including the Internet of Things (IoT) and operational technology (OT). The company’s mission is to actively defend IT environments by identifying, segmenting and enforcing compliance of every connected device.

The mandatory use BPA aligns with the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act and was awarded by the Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Pacific, in order to minimize the costs associated with traditional procurement processes. These processes include sourcing, technical document and solicitation development, contract term negotiations and offer evaluations.

Forescout’s software solutions are readily accessible under Blanket Purchase Agreement N66001-24-A-0003 through Carahsoft’s GSA Schedule 70 GS-35F-0119Y. Carahsoft and authorized reseller partners will jointly provide Forescout software, maintenance, support, services and training to the DoD, U.S. Intelligence Community and Coast Guard. 

The Capgemini Research Institute’s new report, “New defenses, new threats: What AI and Gen AI bring to cybersecurity”, published today, suggests that while new cybersecurity risks are emerging, due to the proliferation of AI and generative AI (Gen AI), these technologies represent a transformative shift in reinforcing cyber-defense strategies for the long term to predict, detect, and respond to threats. Two thirds of organizations are now prioritizing AI within their security operations.

According to the report, while AI is considered by organizations as a strategic technology to strengthen their security strategies, the increased adoption of Gen AI across various industries1 brings heightened vulnerability. Gen AI introduces three major risk areas for organizations: more sophisticated attacks with more adversaries, the expansion of the cyber-attack surface, and a growth in vulnerabilities in the entire lifecycle of custom Gen AI solutions. These risks are also compounded by the misuse of AI and Gen AI by employees which can significantly increase the risk of data leakage.

Two in three organizations are wary of increased exposure to threats Almost all organizations surveyed (97%) say they have encountered breaches or security issues related to the use of Gen AI in the past year. Gen AI also brings additional risks, including hallucinations, biased, harmful, or inappropriate content generation, and prompt injection attacks2. Two in three organizations (67%) are worried about data poisoning and the possible leakage of sensitive data through the training datasets used to train Gen AI models.

Moreover, Gen AI's ability to generate highly realistic synthetic content is posing additional risks: more than two in five organizations surveyed (43%) said they have suffered financial losses arising from the use of deepfakes.

Nearly 6 in 10 believe they need to increase their cybersecurity budget to bolster their defenses consequently.

AI and Gen AI are paramount for detecting and responding to attacks Surveying 1,000 organizations3 that have either considered AI for cybersecurity or are already using it, the report finds that most rely on AI to strengthen their data, application and cloud security due to the technology’s ability to rapidly analyze vast amounts of data, identify patterns and predict potential breaches.

More than 60% of them reported a reduction of at least 5%, in their time-to-detect, and nearly 40% said their remediation time fell by 5% or more after implementing AI in their security operations centers (SOCs).

Three in five organizations surveyed (61%) believe AI to be essential to effective threat response, enabling them to implement proactive security strategies against increasingly sophisticated threat actors. In addition, the same proportion of respondents foresee Gen AI strengthening proactive defense strategies in the long term, anticipating faster threat detection. Over half of them believe also that the technology will empower cybersecurity analysts to concentrate more on strategy for combating complex threats.

“The use of AI and Gen AI has so far proved to be a double-edged sword. While it introduces unprecedented risks, organizations are increasingly relying on AI for faster and more accurate detection of cyber incidents. AI and Gen AI provide security teams with powerful new tools to mitigate these incidents and transform their defense strategies. To ensure they represent a net advantage in the face of evolving threat sophistication, organizations must maintain and prioritize continuous monitoring of the security landscape, build the necessary data management infrastructure, frameworks and ethical guidelines for AI adoption, and establish robust employee training and awareness programs,” said Marco Pereira, Global Head Cybersecurity, Cloud Infrastructure Services, Capgemini.

Methodology The Capgemini Research Institute surveyed 1,000 organizations that have either considered AI for cybersecurity or are already using it, across 12 sectors and 13 countries in Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America. They have annual revenues of $1 billion and over. The global survey took place in May 2024. Organizations surveyed represent a diverse range of sectors including automotive; consumer products; retail; banking; insurance; telecom; energy and utilities; aerospace and defense; high-tech; industrial equipment manufacturing; pharma and healthcare and public sector.