Can TIC 3.0 and zero-trust co-exist?
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As the concept of zero trust gains traction, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is working to make the strategy mesh with the third version of the Trusted Internet Connection policy.
As the concept of zero trust gains traction in government, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is working to make the strategy mesh with the third version of the Trusted Internet Connection policy.
Some commenters on the TIC 3.0 draft said they were concerned about how the policy would work with emerging zero-trust cybersecurity frameworks that don't automatically admit users inside network perimeters.
Under TIC 3.0, agencies can assign security "zones" of varying degrees of trust from high to low. Within those zones, some TIC 3.0 draft commenters said, users can share data. That capability, they said, is at odds with the "trust no one" interconnection approach of zero-trust principles.
Although TIC 3.0 is more aligned to zero-trust frameworks than TIC 2.0, CISA is thinking about how to bring it closer, said Sean Connelly, CISA's TIC program manager, speaking at a Feb. 20 FCW cloud security conference. “The trust zones," he said, "are elastic and dynamic. It can be networked. It can be used with containers, an app, a user. We hope that that is understood by the greater community."
When CISA releases its final draft of TIC 3.0 guidance, the agency will also issue a separate "lessons-learned" document distilled from the comments as a whole, Connelly said.
Additionally, he said CISA might take up zero trust in coming use cases it is developing with agencies.
"We understand the interest in it. It's possible we may be able to tie to the remote-user use case, which is in the OMB [Office of Management and Budget] memo," he said.
CISA's draft handbook release in December, contained two kinds of use cases, "traditional" and "branch office--remote."
Although Connelly said CISA is hoping to publish the final draft of the documents this spring, he declined to give FCW a specific publication date, citing OMB and others' review of the document.
This article was first posted to FCW, a sibling site to GCN.
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