The push to move the entire federal government to an IPv6-only architecture will be an enabler of cybersecurity capabilities like zero trust but can also open agency networks to new threats, officials leading transition efforts said Wednesday.
Federal agencies are under a new mandate to transition the majority of internet-connected systems from IPv4 to IPv6 by the end of fiscal 2025. Federal officials leading this effort have stressed the importance of making the transition, not only for ensuring systems can communicate with IPv6 devices, but also to improve modernization efforts and the cybersecurity of government networks.
“It’s not an easy transition and it’s going to take a lot of work,” Deputy Federal Chief Information Officer Maria Roat said Wednesday during an event hosted by the General Services Administration. “There are tools and techniques that have kept IPv4 viable, [but] it can’t keep up with the continued growth of the number of users on the internet and the explosion of connected [internet of things] technologies.”
Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses are unique identifiers that direct information from one internet-connected device to another.
The previous standard, IPv4, created addresses using a 32-bit format, capping the total number of addresses at 2^32, or just shy of 4.3 billion. The IPv6 schema is 128-bit, enabling more than 340 undecillion, or 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 addresses.
The shift to IPv6 adds significantly more addresses to the global pool, as well as a different numbering format. While IPv4 shows addresses as four sets of one to three digits, IPv6 uses eight sets of four digits. For organizations—including federal agencies—the new format requires recoding systems that run network infrastructure to understand and ingest IPv6 addresses.
IPv6 “solves the scalabili ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
