General Dynamics (GD 0.33%) is advancing the war on cyber hackers.
The company's Fidelis Cybersecurity Solutions (FCS) unit this morning announced the recent opening of a new cybersecurity facility in Columbia, Md., where it has assembled a network defense and forensics team to help public and private clients "combat advanced cyber attacks by assessing their security posture; designing, building and managing a security infrastructure that is capable of discovering and containing advanced threats; and responding to sophisticated attacks quickly and effectively when they occur."
After a cyber attack has been detected, says vice president of cybersecurity services Jim Jaeger, FCS reverse engineers the attack to help identify the attackers and design defenses to prevent future attacks. FCS will also preserve evidence for use in later criminal prosecution of the hackers. The company says its staff has handled "more than 3,500" such "breach cases" already.
FCS is part of General Dynamics' Information Systems and Technology Division, the largest of GD's four main corporate divisions, but one that has seen its revenues slip in recent years. From a high of $11.2 billion in revenue recorded in 2010, GD's IST revenues declined 14% to $10 billion in 2012.
Today's announcement suggests the company intends to reverse this decline, and do so in part by placing more emphasis on assisting private, corporate clients in combating cyber attacks.
