BAE Systems has been awarded a contract to participate in the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency's (DISA) $12.225 billion Encore II Information Technology Solutions program.

As one of 14 large businesses awarded a contract to support the indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract, the company will provide DISA with network engineering services, systems development engineering and integration, security engineering and enterprise support.

The purpose of ENCORE II is to create an infrastructure for, and provide net-centric services to support, global on-line collaboration among the military services, Department of Defense and other agencies of the federal government.

It will also support the command and control, intelligence, and mission-support activities of the military and defense agencies, and the Global Information Grid.

"Under this contract, we will provide the foundation for defending, protecting and ensuring the trust and integrity of information, while allowing for the flexible and discrete control of information sharing," said Rick Schieffelin, president of BAE Systems Information Technology.

DISA will use ENCORE II to support its customers as the agency transitions to the Net-Centric Enterprise Services program, a Department of Defense effort to create a department-wide Web portal providing access to knowledge databases and collaboration tools.

Through its recent acquisition of Tenix Defence, a defense company based in Australia with operations in the U.S., BAE Systems is further positioned to offer a more robust set of products and solutions for this program.

The Tenix Defence-developed Datagate solutions for secure information sharing join the BAE Systems XTS-400 secure applications platform as part of the company's cross-domain solutions. The pairing of the two capabilities enhances BAE Systems' continued investment in delivering leading edge cybersecurity technologies in support of the warfighter.

"The Datagate Diode product adds another critical cornerstone to our cross-domain solutions portfolio of Common Criteria evaluated products and solutions" said Roger Yee, Vice President of BAE System's Defense Enterprise Group.

"We can now offer a broader set of secure information solutions to our customers across the spectrum of evaluated assurance at the highest levels of security products certification." The Datagate Diode is used in mission-critical applications such as high speed video transfer for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle systems.