{"id":109292,"date":"2020-04-13T11:00:57","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T18:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/?p=109292"},"modified":"2021-09-12T22:56:31","modified_gmt":"2021-09-13T05:56:31","slug":"network-federal-agency-remote-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/network-federal-agency-remote-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"Securing US Federal Agency Remote Workers and Branch Offices"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments everywhere are focusing on delivering essential citizen services and maintaining critical infrastructure while keeping their workers safe. While Palo Alto Networks has announced <\/span>programs to help rapidly scale secure telework options<\/span><\/a> during this pandemic, we\u2019re also working on longer-term plans to address the changing world of work. Here in the U.S., this crisis has demonstrated the continuing need to ensure confidentiality, integrity and availability of services to federal agency personnel, regardless of location<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Recently, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a <\/span>memorandum<\/span><\/a> outlining updates to the <\/span>Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) initiative.<\/span><\/a> TIC 3.0 aims to help agencies adopt modern security capabilities while connecting to the internet and other services outside their traditional perimeter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Older TIC guidance has hindered agency adoption of cloud and mobile services, which are key aims of the <\/span>Cloud Smart<\/span><\/a> strategy. Traditionally, federal agencies had few options to secure their branch offices and remote users connecting to the internet for cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) access. They could build and manage their own TICs or acquire TICs from managed services providers. They backhauled their branch office traffic over private links to their data centers and then to the TICs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mobile workers are key to achieving many agency missions, but similarly, securing them has been challenging. Agencies typically use different security products to connect remote users to their office or data center. This introduces another security stack to manage, and application performance for remote users falls the farther they get from their connection point. For both remote users and branch offices, this architecture created a less-than-ideal user experience for everyday applications such as Office 365.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A <\/span>secure access service edge<\/span><\/a> (SASE) helps federal agencies embrace cloud and mobility by providing networking and network security services from a cloud-based, unified platform. <\/span>Prisma Access<\/span><\/a> by Palo Alto Networks is a<\/span> comprehensive SASE solution that delivers networking and security ideal for agency branch offices and remote users, two TIC use cases. Palo Alto Networks just announced that Prisma Access has achieved the designation of \"In Process\"<\/a> for the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). Prisma Access is working toward a FedRAMP Moderate authorization, which will enable agencies to meet TIC policy for branch and remote user use cases, and provide a unified policy framework across users.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather than creating single-purpose technology overlays that are normally associated with point products, <\/span>Prisma Access<\/span><\/a> uses a cloud-based infrastructure to deliver security and networking services, which include:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Networking\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n