The Trusted Internet Connections, or TIC, initiative in government upgraded to the 3.0 standard just before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. It has proven to be an invaluable resource for agencies trying to securely manage their internet connections while quickly adopting a largely telecommuting workforce. But fearing that TIC 3.0 may not go far enough given the circumstances, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released the Interim Telework Guidance report to help agencies continue to respond to the teleworking situation.
At a recent webinar that I moderated, I was fortunate enough to sit down virtually with Sean Connelly, the TIC program manager and senior cybersecurity architect at CISA, to discuss both TIC 3.0 and the teleworking supplement. Probably more than anyone else, Connelly is responsible for creating the TIC standard for the government, having worked on the original document as well as both the 2.0 and the new 3.0 standard.
As a little background about this critical government program, the need for TIC began back in 2006 when the Office of Management and Budget asked the seemingly simple question about how many internet connections were streaming out from federal agencies. When the answer came back, it was pretty surprising for a lot of people including those in the White House, which was led by President George W. Bush at the time. It turns out that there were about 4,000 connections, and many of them were not properly secured. There was also no standard that could be used to secure the connections, which created quite a huge vulnerability.
The federal government as a whole is bigger than some of the largest corporations a ..
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