How the feds are locking down their networks

The federal government is locking down its networks through an ambitious and fast-paced effort to eliminate connections to the Internet that are vulnerable to attack.

In the past nine months, the feds have reduced the number of external network connections they operate from more than 8,000 to about 2,700. By next year, the feds plan to have fewer than 100, many of them shared by multiple agencies. 

It's an approach experts say large private-sector organizations would do well to emulate.

The federal government's remaining Internet access points will have state-of-the-art security policies and managed security services, including antivirus, firewall, intrusion detection and traffic monitoring.

Bush administration officials say the consolidation effort will help agencies fend off a barrage of viruses, worms, denial of service and other attacks, while improving their ability to respond when a hacker gets through its multilayered defenses.

"It will reduce our risk," says Karen Evans, administrator for E-Government and IT in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). "We will have better situational awareness for what's happening on our networks so we can take actions that will help enhance the trust of the American people that we are protecting their information."

OMB announced the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) initiative in November. It joins several other administration efforts designed to bolster cybersecurity, including encrypting data on laptops and migrating agencies to a standard desktop operating system configuration. 

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