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WhiteHawk ramps up cyber revenues with US$1.5 million contract extension
Thu, 8th Oct 2020
FYI, this story is more than a year old

WhiteHawk Limited (ASX: WHK) has been awarded a fiscal 2021 option extension of US$1.5 million (A$2.1M) under an existing seven-year contract.

The contract with a US Federal government Department was for a one-year contract with six option years.

WhiteHawk has been advised that the option for the next financial year has now been exercised, which is worth US$1.5 million to the company over the 2021 financial year - a significant increase on the US$400,000 in revenue awarded to the company under the contract for the 2020 financial year.

The company sees this as validation of its cybersecurity technology and value to the US government in combating cyber threats.

WhiteHawk is the first global online cybersecurity exchange enabling small-to-medium businesses to take smart action against cybercrime, fraud and disruption,

The focus of this contract for WhiteHawk has evolved from cyber risk technical and management services, scoped at US$400,000 to US$750,000 per year, to now lead developer of a comprehensive online Cyber Security Marketplace, with an automated cyber risk review and solution option mapping, for a breadth of US Federal Government entities.

The company's revenues continue to ramp up and have more than doubled to approximately US$585,000 in the first half of 2020.

On an annualised basis, this was broadly in line with the company's revenues for 2019 which were just above US$1 million.

Consequently, on a year-on-year basis, this contract alone represents about 150% of the previous year's revenues.

The contract extension underlines WhiteHawk's product capability and service level execution to perform on all current contracts to achieve further government option year contract extensions and to engage with future customers seamlessly and effectively throughout the current global pandemic.

It is worth noting that this comes just a fortnight after the company announced the automation and scaling of two key product lines, the Cyber Risk Scorecard and CMMC that were added to the online maturity model, enabling scalability across thousands of companies, an added attraction for organisations looking to extend contracts.

It is little surprise the company is now gaining traction in key markets as it continues to improve its product offering. Behind WhiteHawk is a CEO well-versed in US national security.

Executive Chair of WhiteHawk, Terry Roberts, is a former deputy director of US Naval Intelligence and a 35-year veteran of the US national security and cyber intelligence community. She was also a Department of Defence Senior Executive and an Executive at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute.

WhiteHawk says that Roberts has a knack for securing contracts at the highest levels of the US government.

She highlights the benefits of the group's real-time, end-to-end automated product offerings in saying, “We are discovering that our unique end-to-end automated approach to identifying, prioritising and mitigating cyber risks via an easily assessable online platform is increasingly attractive to both government and industry alike as it provides near real-time servicing of their stakeholder organisations or clients.

WhiteHawk's share price is up circa 50% this year.