Raytheon Opens Cyber Solutions Center in Virginia

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Raytheon has opened a new cyber solutions center in DC. The facility is a cybersecurity research and demonstration center and will be used to show public sector agencies and offices new ways of responding to cyber threats.

The Global Cyber Solutions Center (GCSC) will be located in Sterling, Virginia and the company says it will also be used to show IT shops how they can better secure Internet of Things (IoT) projects as increases in connectivity create new vulnerabilities.

Raytheon has a handful of this type of facility spread throughout the world. Earlier this year, the company brought its Cyber Innovation Center online in the U.K., and has continued to expand the use of its Cyber Operations, Development and Evaluation (CODE) Center. The CODE Center, a cyber range based in Northern Virginia, evaluates systems and hardware and emulates any size and type of networked environment, including those used for critical infrastructure and in security operations centers.

MODERNIZATION THROUGH M&A

The research and demonstration centers come alongside other expansions for Raytheon’s cybersecurity business. Earlier this year, Raytheon announced a high profile joint venture with private equity firm Vista Equity Partners that combined Vista portfolio company Websense with Raytheon Cyber Products. The new entity – temporarily named Raytheon|Websense, is headquartered in Austin, Texas and jointly owned by Raytheon and Vista. Raytheon has the majority controlling stake.

Websense offers an insider threat protection platform that will be integrated with the existing feature set of Raytheon Cyber Products to create an expanded cybersecurity and managed services offering. Raytheon said that Websense’s Triton insider threat platform was the primary reason for the acquisition.

San Francisco-based Vista Equity Partners is a big investor in later stage technology, and the joint venture with Raytheon speaks to a broader trend underway in Big Government IT. More and more, these vendors are following the activity of other tech giants in Silicon Valley and modernizing through mergers and acquisitions.  Civsource has previously reported on the spate of acquisitions LexisNexis has made, buying up civic startups as it pursues the growing public safety opportunity set in federal, state and local government. Cybersecurity represents another key area for this type of rapid acquisition.

Raytheon, Motorola Solutions and others are all pursuing bolt-on acquisitions to add much needed and often considerably more modern features to their existing platforms. As smaller companies with newer tech and newly minted developers come out with innovative solutions like Websense, they are likely to catch the eye of government IT’s old guard. Raytheon, as well as other big players like Booz Allen Hamilton or General Dynamics are all known for offering expansive and government certified platforms, but those platforms have always been a bit behind the curve as a result of long procurement cycles and certification processes. As cyber threats develop faster than FedRAMP can work through its certification bottleneck, the need for modernization through M&A is likely to grow.