ATARC unveils TIC 3.0 Demonstration Center for agencies
A new state-of-the-art physical test environment will allow federal agencies to try out emerging technologies and shared services associated with the Trusted Internet Connections 3.0 policy.
The Trusted Internet Connections 3.0 Demonstration Center is the result of a partnership between the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center and 10 companies. The center was built within Equinix’s facility in Ashburn, Virginia, over the last year.
It will give agencies a space to evaluate new cloud and infrastructure solutions for their respective TIC use cases, rather than spending up to a year standing up their own test labs and going through the procurement process with vendors. TIC 3.0 updates the rules for how agencies secure their networks, introducing a multi-boundary approach that accounts for advances in cybersecurity since TIC 2.0 was released in 2007.
Agencies can test services from the 10 companies between Oct. 30 and Dec. 11. In addition to Equinix, the group includes Fortinet, Cisco, Trend Micro, Palo Alto Networks, ThousandEyes, ZScaler, F5, AttackIQ and World Wide Technology.
“TIC 3.0 offers agencies the opportunity and flexibility to modernize while still addressing the security protections,” said Gerald Caron, enterprise network management director at the State Department, in the Tuesday announcement. “The industry partners unique ways and approaches of applying their solutions to address TIC 3.0, and presenting them will allow government agencies to see real working architectures through the upcoming demonstrations to compare and help determine which may be best to address their use cases.”
TIC 3.0 guidance limits connections between federal networks and the outside world, including the internet, thereby limiting lines of cyberattack. The TIC 3.0 Demonstration Center offers TIC access points to federal agencies, so they can ensure emerging technologies align with protocol requirements and legacy systems before buying them.
