Arlington cybersecurity startup Endgame has landed an $18.8 million contract with the U.S. Air Force. Endgame's platform will roll out across thousands of USAF computers handled by its cyber protection teams in one of the biggest digital security contracts offered this year.
Endgame's software is built around detecting and stopping hackers and malware at endpoints (hence the name). Figuring out whether a system has been hacked can be tricky, which means threats often go unnoticed for months—an average of 146 days, to be exact, according to Endgame. Cutting down that time and being more proactive about spotting and dealing with hackers is what Endgame's software offers to do, with methodology informed by the U.S. intelligence and military agencies.
The contract didn't come out of the wild blue yonder. It's an extension of the $1.5 million pilot program for Endgame's newer, eponymous platform that the Air Force started testing a year ago. Clearly, the tests and exercises the Air Force put Endgame's platform through went well enough for the eight-year-old firm to win the bigger contract.
Though not a strict funding deal, Endgame's sizable new contract fits neatly into a months-long run of financial success for cybersecurity startups in the Washington, D.C. area. Though there are legitimate concerns that the Pentagon is ignoring innovation in general in the area, that may not apply when it comes to cybersecurity, likely in part because of the deep connection to the intelligence community that Endgame and other companies in the industry have.
Getting the Air Force's stamp of approval could be a lot more lucrative for Endgame beyond the contract. Corporations and other government agencies watch for new developments in cybersecurity, especially as the number of attacks, successful or not, skyrockets. Endgame estimates that $75 billion a year is spent on cybersecurity, suggesting an urgent search for effective tools in both the public and private sector.
“There is a macro convergence occurring between similar cyberthreats aimed at governments and contemporary commercial enterprise," Endgame CEO Nathaniel Fick told DC Inno in a previous interview. “The threat sphere is converging between federal and commercial threats. It is clear that threat and infrastructure convergence must mean solution convergence as well."
