bowbridge Delivers Critical Link in Supply Chain Transaction Security

The Challenge

Federal agencies of all sizes are increasingly modernizing key applications to improve their flexibility and to comply with the U.S. Federal Paperwork Reduction Act. One of the largest U.S. departments recently undertook a large project to improve its ability to manage a complex supply chain that includes thousands of internal employees, client organizations, and external vendors. For the past 20 years, the agency had supported its procurement activities, such as customer ordering, purchase orders, vendor bidding, contracts, awards, shipping, freight, and invoicing, using a collection of proprietary applications. Most had been developed using programming languages such as COBOL. In addition to being time-consuming and costly to update, the department’s in-depth knowledge of each application and its programming techniques was being lost as employees retired.

To improve its supply chain management efficiency, the agency selected SAP for integrated supply chain management because it provided maximum out-of-the-box functionality and built-in commercial best practices. SRA International, a company dedicated to solving complex problems of global significance for government organizations, was also chosen to help the agency create an integrated procurement system that supports a common database and design across all of its users, clients, and vendors through a web portal. The new system also required protection from the threat of viruses and malware associated with incoming file attachments. Network security measures provided robust protection through the agency’s firewall, but once attachments were decrypted inside the firewall, additional protection was needed to prevent any potentially malicious file from being stored in the SAP database and from being made made accessible to internal or external users.

The new system also required protection from the threat of viruses and malware associated with incoming file attachments. Network security measures provided robust protection through the agency’s firewall, but once attachments were decrypted inside the firewall, additional protection was needed to prevent any potentially malicious file from being stored in the SAP database and from being made made accessible to internal or external users.