CISA demonstrates Industry Engagement Platform for vendors, explains scheduling, uploads and privacy rules

The presenter, a staff member at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), demonstrated CISA’s new Industry Engagement Platform in a Future Forward Series webinar and walked vendors through account setup, meeting requests, document uploads and platform rules.

CISA framed the platform as a two-way engagement tool for capability briefings tied to four Technology of Interest categories — emerging technology; data analytics, storage and management; IT security controls; and communications technology — with 31 subsets vendors can target. The presenter said the platform is intended for information sharing and searching by CISA staff and does not obligate the government to purchase products or give special consideration to any organization: “All information shared in CISA’s Future Forward series regarding CISA’s future capability needs or goals are solely for informational purposes,” the presenter said.

The demonstration covered the account and scheduling flow. Vendors are redirected to login.gov to create an account, then asked to request a business account in the IEP where they enter organization details, NAICS codes and a primary presenter. Organizations are encouraged to have a SAM.gov Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) ready; non-U.S. entities should obtain a UEI before registering. CISA reviews access requests and typically approves business accounts in one to three business days. Presentations should be uploaded in PDF or PowerPoint format and attached when requesting a capability briefing; the presenter advised uploading at least 48 hours (two business days) before the meeting so slides can be included in the Outlook invitation.

Practical platform rules explained during the Q&A include: capability briefings are scheduled for 30 minutes (follow-up meetings are usually one hour); the system is intended to prevent a single organization from booking multiple concurrent meetings; one person per company should set up the organizational profile to avoid duplicates but additional names can be added to the profile; there is a roughly 1 GB upload limit for presentation files and large video demonstrations may need to be shared offline by email. The presenter also confirmed FedRAMP certification is not required to request a briefing, though having contract vehicles or a GSA schedule can ease later procurement steps.

The presenter clarified that CISA contracting staff do not typically attend capability briefings and that specific procurement paths are not discussed in this forum; attendees with procurement questions were directed to contact CISA contracting specialists or the CISA Industry Engagement inbox. On privacy, the presenter said information submitted to the platform is shared only among CISA federal employees per the platform privacy policy and urged vendors not to post personally identifiable or sensitive proprietary information into chat during the webinar.

CISA launched the platform on Dec. 4 and has begun booking meetings; the presenter acknowledged initial speed bumps and said available dates currently show into mid-January and beyond as slots fill. The webinar recording will be edited and uploaded to CISA’s YouTube channel in about three to five weeks, and attendees were pointed to CISA.gov’s Doing Business with CISA page and the DHS Acquisition Planning Forecast System (APFS) for upcoming requirements.

The session closed with a moderator request that attendees complete a short survey to help improve future events and a reminder that the platform’s Open Innovation and Technologies of Interest pages list the TOIs and subsets vendors should use to align capability briefings.