Commerce to leverage NOAA's TIC

By Sara Friedman

Connecting state and local government leaders

| October 23, 2017

Several bureaus at Commerce will be getting Trusted Internet Connection access from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

As part of the administration's push toward shared services, the Department of Commerce plans to leverage the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Trusted Internet Connection.

All government agencies are required to use a TIC for employee access to external networks. As a TIC Access Provider, NOAA has have rolled out four TICAP connections at four different locations over the past three years.

NOAA’s TICAP connection got approval for widespread use by Commerce agencies earlier this year, and "several bureaus” in the process of getting funding, acting Commerce Department CIO Rod Turk told GCN after a panel at a Oct. 12 Government Executive technology conference.

“We are going to layer in all of the other bureaus in the department that are willing to use it,” he said. “We are in the process of getting other bureaus to move into NOAA’s capability.”

With Commerce’s sprawling mission, Turk said he believes that smaller agencies will get the most benefit from leveraging NOAA’s TICAP connection for a “greater level of service” and more options for cloud services.

“NOAA has developed a stack of tools that provides the same information to Einstein that a commercial provider would provide from the Managed Trusted Internet Protocol Services program,” Turk said. “We are going to start running the Department of Commerce’s traffic through this connection that NOAA has developed for us.”

Einstein is a program operated by the Department of Homeland Security that detects and blocks cyberattacks targeting federal systems. DHS is the in the process of moving into the third phase of the Einstein program that involves continuous monitoring of government networks with help from major internet service providers.

Editor's note: This article was changed Oct. 23 to correct the date of the Government Executive conference.

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