Trusted Information Systems

Trusted Information Systems (TIS) was a computer security research and development company during the 1980s and 1990s, performing computer and communications (information) security research for organizations such as NSA, DARPA, ARL, AFRL, SPAWAR, and others.

TIS was founded in 1983 by NSA veteran Steve Walker, and at various times employed notable information security experts including David Elliott Bell, Martha Branstad, John Pescatore, Marv Schaefer, Steve Crocker, Marcus Ranum, John Williams, Steve Lipner and Carl Ellison. TIS was headquartered in Glenwood, Maryland, in a surprisingly rural location; the company was started in Walker's garage on Shady Lane in Glenwood, MD. As the company grew, rather than move to Baltimore or the Washington D.C. suburbs, a small office building was constructed on land next to Walker's new home on Rt 97.

TIS projects included Trusted Xenix, the first commercially available B2 operating system; Trusted Mach, a research project that influenced DTOS and eventually SELinux; Domain and Type Enforcement (TE) which likewise influenced SELinux; the fwtk Firewall Toolkit (the first open source firewall software), which evolved into the Gauntlet Firewall, one of the first commercial firewall products; and a broad range of Internet Standards, including S/MIME, SNMP, DNS, DNSSEC, and many others.

The first whitehouse.gov e-mail server was located at their headquarters.

TIS's operating system work directly affected BSD/OS, which the Gauntlet Firewall was based on, as well as Linux, FreeBSD, Darwin, and others.

The company went public in 1996 and was acquired in 1998 by Network Associates, which later became PGP and McAfee. The security research organization became NAI Labs and the Gauntlet engineering and development organization was folded into Network Associates' engineering and development.

NAI Labs went through a couple of branding changes which complemented Network Associates' branding efforts. In 2001 the name was changed to Network Associates Laboratories to better match the corporate identity. Then, in 2002-2003, there was a major branding initiative by Network Associates culminating in selection of the flag brand, McAfee. As a result, the security research organization became McAfee Research.

In 2003, SPARTA, Inc., an employee-owned company, acquired the Network Security branch of McAfee Research.

In 2005, SPARTA acquired the remaining branches of McAfee Research, which were organized into the Security Research Division (SRD) of the Information Systems Security Operation (ISSO).

In 2008, Cobham, plc, a British aerospace company, acquired SPARTA. There have been no organizational changes to SRD or ISSO that affect the security research.

On a separate path, TIS's primary commercial product, the Gauntlet Firewall, was acquired from McAfee by Secure Computing Corporation (SCC), and is being integrated into their next generation Sidewinder Firewall.

Several curious twists of fate had TIS acquired by NAI during its attempt to acquire PGP, which was also acquired by NAI; similarly, SCC and TIS were fierce business competitors at various points.