Trusted Information Systems
| Company type | Public (post-1996) |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer security |
| Founded | 1983 |
| Founder | Steve Walker |
| Fate | Acquired by Network Associates in 1998 |
| Headquarters | Glenwood , United States |
| Products | Trusted Xenix, Trusted Mach, Domain and Type Enforcement, FWTK Firewall Toolkit, Gauntlet Firewall, IPSec VPN solution, encryption key recovery systems |
| Parent | Network Associates (post-1998) |
Trusted Information Systems, Inc. (TIS) operated as a computer security research and development company throughout the 1980s and 1990s, delivering security solutions to prominent clients such as the NSA, DARPA, ARL, AFRL, and SPAWAR.
History
Established in 1983 by former NSA professional Steve Walker, TIS brought together top-tier information security specialists including David Elliott Bell, Martha Branstad, John Pescatore, Marv Schaefer, Steve Crocker, Marcus Ranum, Wei Xu, John Williams, Steve Lipner, and Carl Ellison. The firm was based in Glenwood, Maryland, expanding from Walker’s basement to a dedicated facility along Route 97 near his residence, choosing not to relocate to the Baltimore or Washington D.C. metropolitan areas.
Products
TIS was responsible for creating several groundbreaking security technologies:
- Trusted Xenix, recognized as the first commercially released B2-level operating system
- Trusted Mach, a research-focused OS kernel that served as an inspiration for DTOS and later SELinux
- Domain and Type Enforcement (DTE), another foundational technology influencing SELinux
- FWTK Firewall Toolkit (1993), notable as the initial open-source firewall software
- Operated the inaugural whitehouse.gov e-mail server between 1993 and 1995
- Gauntlet Firewall (1994), among the earliest commercial firewalls supporting Internet protocols such as S/MIME, SNMP, DNSSEC; regarded as a third-generation firewall
- The first commercial implementation of an IPSec VPN solution (1994)
- Encryption key recovery systems integrated with IPSec, ISAKMP, IKE, and RSA standards
The company’s operating system developments had a significant impact on BSD/OS—the basis for both Gauntlet Firewall and IPSec—as well as influencing Linux, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Sun OS, Darwin, among others.
Post company
After going public in 1996, TIS made an attempt to acquire PGP Inc. but was itself purchased in 1998 by Network Associates (NAI), which had acquired PGP Inc. the previous year. Following this acquisition, TIS’s security research division became known as NAI Labs, with the Gauntlet development team absorbed into Network Associates’ engineering group.
NAI Labs experienced several rebrandings consistent with Network Associates’ corporate identity: renamed Network Associates Laboratories in 2001 and later rebranded as McAfee Research during the 2002–2003 transition emphasizing the McAfee brand.
In 2003, SPARTA, Inc., an employee-owned organization, acquired the Network Security segment of McAfee Research and in 2005 expanded its holdings by purchasing the remaining units organized under the Security Research Division (SRD) within Information Systems Security Operation (ISSO).
Cobham plc, a British aerospace corporation, acquired SPARTA in 2008 while preserving the SRD and ISSO organizational frameworks.
Separately from these developments, TIS’s flagship product—the Gauntlet Firewall—was acquired from McAfee in 2002 by Secure Computing Corporation (SCC), a former competitor. This product was incorporated into SCC’s firewall portfolio under the name Sidewinder Firewall before returning to McAfee ownership following SCC’s acquisition in 2008. Subsequently renamed McAfee Enterprise Firewall, this line was discontinued in 2013 after McAfee purchased Finland-based Stonesoft and announced plans to transition existing firewall customers to Stonesoft’s Stonegate platform.