Emerging Technology
Businesswire | July 28, 2023
BRP Group, Inc. today announced the establishment of its newest national Center of Excellence (“COE”) — Government Contracting (“GovCon”) – to join the firm’s expanding portfolio of specialty practices.
The new practice launch is part of BRP Group’s intentional strategy of leveraging the deep expertise of its national network of risk management and insurance partnerships, and their experts and specialists, to make a greater difference for their clients’ business needs regardless of geographic location.
BRP Group’s GovCon COE team is comprised of knowledgeable insurance experts with broad experience advising clients who operate in the government contracting space. This COE is specifically structured to support federal contracting clients with property and casualty, employee benefits and retirement insurance solutions, GovCon M&A due diligence and in-house compliance specialists.
“Our new Government Contracting (GovCon) Center of Excellence (COE) is an expansion of BRP Group’s specialized solutions and capabilities that work to meet the unique needs of current and prospective clients. By combining the expertise from our two partner firms, Armfield, Harrison & Thomas (AHT) and The Capital Group, we are excited to bring this additional practice to the marketplace,” said Dan Galbraith, BRP Group’s Chief Operating Officer. “Not only do government contractors encounter typical risk management and insurance issues, they also navigate unique challenges associated with conducting business within a rapidly-evolving, highly-regulated environment. With more than 25 years of experience and a proven track record of designing specialized insurance coverage for these complex business and regulatory conditions, our dedicated colleagues, led by BRP Group’s Senior Director of Sales Kevin FitzPatrick, keep clients protected, in compliance and proactively prepared to mitigate risk and manage costs.”
The GovCon COE focuses on addressing the unique needs and challenges of clients in the hyper- competitive federal contracting space that are best solved by a unified team approach. The GovCon COE helps federal contractors navigate these mission critical areas:
Controlling fringe expenses to keep competitive Wrap Rates
GovCon Employee Benefits Benchmarking - designing programs that help improve employee attraction and retention.
Risk Management Strategy
Defense Base Act (DBA) Coverage
International Coverage
Cyber Liability Insurance
Service Contract Act (SCA) Compliance and Strategy
401K plan development and administration
In addition, the GovCon COE has integrated two key programs:
GovTech™: The Government Technology Insurance Company offers robust commercial insurance policies that flow down the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) framework and provides easy access to GovCon insurance subject matter experts at premiums that accurately reflect the exposures.
GovConHealth: Provides go-to-market strategies to federal contractors to help them control employee benefits expenses. The initiative is powered by a unique and proprietary consortium-funded stop-loss arrangement that bands together high-performing federal contractors to safely and conservatively partially self-fund their employer-based healthcare.
ABOUT BRP GROUP
BRP Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: BRP) is an independent insurance distribution firm delivering tailored insurance and risk management insights and solutions that give our Clients the peace of mind to pursue their purpose, passion and dreams. We are innovating the industry by taking a holistic and tailored approach to risk management, insurance, and employee benefits, and support our Clients, Colleagues, Insurance Company Partners and communities through the deployment of vanguard resources and capital to drive our growth. BRP Group represents over 1.3 million clients across the United States and internationally. For more information, please visit www.baldwinriskpartners.com.
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Emerging Technology, Cybersecurity
PR Newswire | August 18, 2023
Axiad, a leading provider of organization-wide passwordless orchestration, today announced a new Unified Credential Management System (UCMS) package calledPasswordless for Air Gapped and Critical Environmentsto meet the phishing-resistant requirements of The White House Executive Order (EO) 14028. This package brings passwordless authentication and end user self-service capabilities to air gapped and critical infrastructure environments that integrate Microsoft Security solutions. Overall, the package helps government agencies as well as critical infrastructure and defense industrial base (DIB) organizations maximize security and end-user acceptance and minimize security overhead.
In the United States, critical infrastructure systems continue to be a top target for cybercriminals. In fact,Microsoft reportedthat critical infrastructure cyberattacks doubled in 2022 from 20% to 40% of nation-state-sponsored attacks. Because of this, the U.S. government, via EO 14028 on improving the nation's cybersecurity, has mandated security measures, including strong passwordless multi-factor authentication (MFA), for government agencies and is strongly recommending the use of this technology for critical infrastructure.
In response to this growing need, Axiad's Passwordless for Air Gapped and Critical Environments provides a seamless way for organizations to integrate government-grade, phishing-resistant passwordless authentication as well as key functional and operational support into on-premises air gapped environments.
The new package provides full interoperation with a range of Microsoft products – including Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services and Microsoft Certificate Authority – to ensure authentication is highly secure and consistent and customers get maximum value out of their existing environments. Additionally, it provides credential management and self-service credential enrollment and account recovery (CEAR), which are critical capabilities due to the high costs or the complete lack of on-site IT support in air gapped environments.
"Organizations with air gapped and critical infrastructure environments need passwordless authentication and a range of physical and platform authenticators to help prevent cyber-attacks," said Jerome Becquart, chief operating officer at Axiad. "With this new package, Axiad is the first company to provide all these elements plus the critical missing ingredient – self-service authentication management, including enrollment and account recovery – and bring them to the on-premises Microsoft ecosystem."
Axiad's Passwordless for Air Gapped and Critical Environments provides the following unique capabilities:
Strong Authentication:The package provides government-grade FIPS 140 validated passwordless authentication with the flexibility needed to accommodate the full range of needs of employees, contractors, vendors and suppliers. For example, it offers a range of passwordless options, including both physical (YubiKeys, smart cards, PIV cards, USB keys, etc.) and platform (virtual smart cards).
Powerful Self-Service Capabilities:Axiad AirLock, which provides help desk automation by eliminating temporary passwords, provides self-service credential enrollment, and Axiad MyCircle provides self-service account recovery within a trusted circle of colleagues rather than waiting for the help desk to respond – both of which help to increase operational efficiencies for frontline workers and reduce IT costs.
Ready Implementation:The package's architecture is made to operate in air gapped environments and to seamlessly interoperate with existing authentication and infrastructure investments without requiring upgrades. This package fully leverages and extends the life of Microsoft authentication (e.g., Microsoft Active Directory) and infrastructure (e.g., Microsoft Windows Server) investments.
"Axiad's integration with Microsoft empowers critical infrastructure, government and defense industrial base to easily upgrade their existing Microsoft on-premises infrastructure to become passwordless," said Ehud Itshaki, principal product manager at Microsoft. "With phishing-resistant, passwordless authentication, they can enhance their security posture and comply with the recent EO mandating phishing-resistant MFA – all while getting more out of their existing Microsoft authentication and infrastructure investments."
About Axiad
Axiad delivers organization-wide passwordless orchestration to secure people, machines, and interactions for enterprise and public sector organizations that must optimize their cybersecurity posture while navigating underlying IT complexity. The company's flagship product, Axiad Cloud, is a comprehensive, secure and integrated authentication platform that allows customers to move to a passwordless future without the friction and risk of fragmented solutions. Axiad supports the widest range of credentials in the industry including FIDO, mobile MFA, Windows Hello for Business, YubiKeys, smart cards, TPM and biometrics, and is trusted by public sector organizations and Fortune 500 companies across aerospace & defense, financial services, insurance, healthcare, oil & energy and more.
For more information visitaxiad.comand follow us onTwitterandLinkedIn.
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Emerging Technology
PR Newswire | August 02, 2023
Accrete AI, a leading dual-use AI software company, announced today that it has been awarded a Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) contract by the General Services Administration (GSA), the centralized procurement arm of the federal government. The company will deliver a transformative enterprise solution powered byArgus™, Accrete's dual-use anomaly detection AI Agent.
"We're happy to streamline and expand the procurement options for the defense and intelligence community in order to bring innovation in AI at the speed of light to the U.S. Government.," said Jim Gill, Chief Operating Officer, Accrete AI. "The AI arms race is moving quickly and the government needs to access innovative technologies, especially AI, faster and easier than ever before. The GSA MAS contract will help bring Argus into the right hands at the speed of relevance."
Argus will ultimately reshape the U.S. Government's posture in the open-source information battlespace, facilitating cross-agency communication, eliminating redundant tasks, boosting the analytical efficiency of petabytes of internal and external data including social media, and reducing time to insight from weeks and months to seconds for tens of thousands of analysts.
About Accrete AI
Accrete AI, founded in 2017, delivers configurable, reliable, and accurate dual-use Analytical AI Agents to both government and commercial customers. Analytical AI agents are AI software that learn from domain specific human expertise, perform analytical work that would otherwise require an army of human experts, and generate predictive insight beyond human capacity, enabling enterprise customers to grow in previously unimaginable ways. Accrete is headquartered in Lower Manhattan with offices in Alexandria, Va., and Wellesley, Mass. For more information, visit www.accrete.ai.
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