Booz Allen to Deploy DISA’s Thunderdome Architecture at Scale

Booz Allen Hamilton has secured a potential five-year follow-on production other transaction authority agreement to deploy the Defense Information Security Agency’s Thunderdome architecture at scale.

Thunderdome is a cybersecurity architecture that uses enterprise identity, credentials and access management, commercial secure access service edge and software-defined networking and security tools to protect DOD networks. It is designed to provide seamless protection, simplified information access and flexibility.

Under the contract, Booz Allen will implement and operate Thunderdome’s zero trust network access and application security. Thunderdome will strengthen the Department of Defense’s networks and help warfighters fend off adversarial activity using network and resource access tools.

A prototype of Thunderdome was developed under an earlier OTA agreement issued in January 2022, Booz Allen said.

Thunderdome’s implementation has been in DISA’s pipelines over recent months.

In February, DISA deployed the zero trust architecture in various locations, replacing the 10-year-old Joint Regional Security Stacks platform. According to DISA Cyber Directorate Technical Director Drew Malloy, Thunderdome has a wider scope than JRSS in that the older system only deals with a mid-tier security stack while Thunderdome secures endpoints, the applications data layer and other critical network components.