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Why DHS is changing the way agencies connect to the internet
The federal government is revamping its policy for the Trusted Internet Con- nection initiative to shift the focus to encouraging greater cloud adoption — a major IT modernization goal.
One of the main objectives of the upgrade, called TIC 3.0, is to develop via- ble use cases and guidance for agencies as they continue to grow their reliance on a more mobile workforce and move more legacy applications to the cloud.
Mark Bunn, a program manager in the Federal Network Resilience Divi- sion at the Department of Homeland Security, said the TIC refresh is a reac- tion to the explosion of cloud comput- ing and the emergence of new cyber- security programs, such as Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation, that are not accounted for in the current policy. He made the remarks during a Jan. 30 event on cloud security sponsored by FCW.
The White House’s IT moderniza- tion plan, released in December 2017, explicitly calls for updating TIC to facilitate cloud adoption.
Bunn said the average agency uses eight cloud service providers, and federal agencies as a whole use 228.
Two-thirds of those instances are for software as a service.
“We’ve de nitely had some agencies that were very frank and outspoken,” Bunn told FCW. “It’s wonderful they were able to articulate just how bad things are at that level, to say. ‘This is causing me pain
and...these are real
problems for us.’”
administration, told FCW that the TIC architecture was not designed to support a modern, cloud-based environment. The updated framework will likely take TIC in a different direction and push cloud and shared services as a way to bring agencies into compliance, he added.
DHS officials
want to address
“the trombone
effect” — the latency issues that occur when agencies try to access govern- ment data that is hosted off premises. Bunn said it is one of the most frequent complaints he hears from agencies.
“[They say] ‘I have to triple my band- width in and out of my agency just to support high-bandwidth applications,’” he added.
TIC was developed in 2007 out of a desire to limit the number of access points from government networks to the public internet.
Ari Schwartz, who served as the National Security Council’s senior direc- tor for cybersecurity during the Obama
Bunn told reporters that DHS is basing its timeframes for TIC 3.0 on the deadlines established in the White House’s IT modernization plan. That document directs the Of ce of Manage- ment and Budget to issue a preliminary update for the TIC policy, establish a comprehensive strategy for cloud-based email and collaboration, and test new requirements through a series of pilot projects by March 2.
It also calls for OMB, DHS and the General Services Administration to deliver rapid draft updates to the TIC policy by June 30.
— Derek B. Johnson
The White House’s IT modernization plan, released in December 2017, explicitly calls for updatingTIC to facilitate cloud adoption.
FCW CALENDAR
The 2018 government and industry Eagle awards will be announced — and all the Federal 100 winners will be honored — at FCW’s 29th annual awards gala.
Washington, D.C.
FCW.com/fed100
2/28 Digital Government
More than a dozen agency IT leaders will speak at FCW’s Citizen
Engagement Summit. Topics include security, analytics, talent recruitment and user-driven development. Washington, D.C.
fcw.com/citizen
3/12 Contracting
The Professional Services Council kicks off its Vision Federal Market
FY18 Forecast program with an event to review previous ndings and form study teams for 2018.
Washington, D.C. is.gd/FCW_PSC_vision
January/February 2018 FCW.COM 3