# Broker / Agent Pathway Investment Basis

Prepared for WHPS planning discussion on May 21, 2026.

## Investment position

The Broker / Agent Pathway investment is expected to require focused new funding while reusing WHPS enterprise capability already in service. The model separates incremental project funding from owned infrastructure, security tooling, delivery tooling, AI SDLC capacity, and annual operating support.

## Planning ranges

- Incremental funding to validate: $335K - $735K.
- Elevate audit and penetration testing: $300K - $600K planning range pending formal quote and scope.
- Owned capability showback: $150K - $360K.
- Annual operating support: $35K - $90K per year.

## Cost treatment

- Incremental funding: AppLogix contractor support, Elevate audit and penetration testing, remediation support, and procurement gaps not covered by existing enterprise licenses.
- Owned capability showback: governed AI SDLC delivery model, on-prem servers, storage, backup, data center, network, DNS, reverse proxy, F5 VIP, WAF, IAM, SSO, MFA, IDM, Tanium, Cortex, Qualys, SAST, DAST, SIEM, CI/CD, endpoint controls, monitoring, and release evidence workflow.
- Annual operating support: patching, certificate management, vulnerability scanning, evidence refresh, production support, access review, incident response, and minor release support.
- Delivery efficiency: keep delivery speed and capacity leverage as investment context, not as a budget line.

## Validation inputs

- Loaded labor rates for engineering, QA, PM, security, architecture, and support.
- AppLogix contractor rate card, burn rate, and approved scope.
- Elevate audit and penetration testing quote, scope, retest assumptions, and procurement treatment.
- Available capacity across servers, storage, load balancing, WAF, network, certificates, backup, and monitoring.
- Licensing coverage for Tanium, Cortex, Qualys, SAST, DAST, SIEM, CI/CD, and related security platforms.
- Capitalization versus operating expense treatment for internal labor, contractor support, security remediation, and platform enablement.
- Annual support model, incident response coverage, release cadence, and evidence refresh ownership.

## Recommended treatment

Position the Broker / Agent Pathway as a controlled investment that concentrates new funding in contractor support, independent assurance, and gap remediation while making the value of WHPS-owned capability transparent. This provides a cleaner funding discussion: the platform uses enterprise assets already funded and operated, but it still consumes real infrastructure, tooling, and support capacity.

## Attachments

- Broker_Agent_Pathway_Investment_View.xlsx
- BrokerPortal_Investment_Estimate.csv
- BrokerPortal_Security_Architecture_Overview.docx
- BrokerPortal_Security_Testing_and_Release_Evidence_Checklist.docx
- BrokerPortal_Security_Controls_and_Evidence_Matrix.docx
- MarketLink traceability matrix and evidence vault