The U.S. Department of Homeland Security awarded CenturyLink a service expansion contract to provide EINSTEIN 3 Accelerated to all federal agencies.

The EINSTEIN program is an intrusion detection system designed to enhance situational awareness. The Department of Homeland Security's service expansion contract follows up an earlier contract that provided cybersecurity protections to their customers in March 2013.

Features of EINSTEIN 3 Accelerated (E3A) include advanced email filtering, web Domain Name System protections, and signature-based intrusion prevention services. Company and department officials say the new contract helps DHS strengthen its cyberdefense capabilities by making protections available to all civilian federal agencies by the end of 2015.

"CenturyLink is excited to be able to offer EINSTEIN cybersecurity protections to more federal agencies," said CenturyLink Senior Vice President and General Manager Tim Meehan in a statement. "CenturyLink's E3A service was the first to achieve initial operating capability from DHS and the first fully operational E3A system to begin actively providing cybersecurity services to federal civilian agencies' end-users."

The EINSTEIN program's capabilities are built on a combination of commercial and government-developed hardware and software.