This year, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) finalized two Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) 3.0 use cases. These use cases for remote users and branch offices help agencies secure their external connections to federal networks and maintain compliance. The guidance outlines how remote users and branch offices can connect directly to the cloud or an external trust zone.
To meet the TIC 3.0 use cases, AT&T Cybersecurity has selected Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access as the standard offering, which will be available through its AT&T Government Trusted Internet solution. Providing a comprehensive and scalable solution, AT&T is combining software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) technology, security capabilities through Prisma Access and fiber connectivity in a 24/7 managed solution. The solution will bring highly secure TIC 3.0 access to federal remote users and branch offices.
Enabling Consistent and Secure Connectivity
FedRAMP Moderate Authorized Prisma Access offers U.S. government organizations scalable, cloud-delivered networking and security to protect their workforces, from any location and with any type of internet connection, while helping to maintain TIC 3.0 compliance. By teaming with Palo Alto Networks, AT&T can deliver these benefits to federal customers as part of their new AT&T Government Trusted Internet managed offering.
Prisma Access consolidates all the networking and security capabilities that organizations need to enable their remote workforces into one cloud-delivered platform. It also provides security for all application traffic while ensuring an exceptional user experience. And, it’s Zero Trust ready, which is essential for agencies working to meet the Zero Trust requirements outlined in the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity, which was issued by the Biden administration in May 2021.
Transitioning From the TIC 2.2 Solution to the TIC 3.0 Solution
Government customers who are already using AT&T’s TIC-compliant Managed Trusted Internet Protocol Service (MTIPS) and the TIC 2.2 reference architecture to access internet and cloud from on-premises locations can easily integrate and modernize with the AT&T Government Trusted Internet managed offering, with Prisma Access for TIC 3.0.
The existing TIC 2.2 reference architecture still works well for on-site users connecting to the internet and cloud services through the agency WAN. However, TIC 2.2 doesn’t suit agencies’ mobile and telework users who experience latency and other performance issues while trying to connect to internet and cloud resources. With the AT&T Government Trusted Internet managed solution, featuring Prisma Access, agencies can modify their existing General Services Administration (GSA) Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract to secure their remote users and branch offices.
Helping Agencies Enable Security Situational Awareness
In other exciting news on Prisma Access, we’ve been participating in the Cloud Log Aggregation Warehouse (CLAW) pilot program to assist agencies in providing CISA analysts with security situational awareness to enable incident response. CLAW is a CISA-deployed architecture for collecting and aggregating security telemetry data from agencies using commercial cloud services. It’s meant to enable secure, efficient methods for processing cloud security data in a way that offers CISA situational awareness at a level similar to what’s provided by current National Cybersecurity Protection System EINSTEIN on-premises deployments.
The Department of Homeland Security is currently evaluating how our Cortex Data Lake solution, which collects, transforms and analyzes enterprise data, pushes log data to CLAW from Prisma Access. Cortex Data Lake is included in Prisma Access and is also FedRAMP Moderate Authorized. The completion of the CLAW pilot should allow departments and agencies to send telemetry data to CISA’s security analytics tools.
Learn More About the AT&T Government Trusted Internet Solution
For more details on how AT&T and Palo Alto Networks are working together to help government organizations meet the finalized TIC 3.0 guidance for remote users and branch offices, see AT&T’s announcement or read the white paper.
To learn more, download the Prisma Access datasheet and the Cortex Data Lake datasheet.