U.S. Government acquisition programs must actively manage their IC supply chains, anticipate potential threats posed by outsourcing practices, formally assess their system's vulnerabilities and employ Trusted suppliers and/or pursue other means of risk mitigation.
Trust is defined as "the confidence in one's ability to secure national security systems by assessing the integrity of the people and processes used to design, generate, manufacture and distribute national security critical components."
The Trusted Access Program Office (TAPO) has been chartered by the U. S. Government to find and maintain suppliers of Trusted microelectronic parts. TAPO has successfully developed a reliable source of parts that gives the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Intelligence Community needed access to advanced commercial processes, fabrication tools and fabrication services. In so doing, TAPO has made it possible for the Intelligence Community to design and obtain advanced mission critical systems via commercial, state of the art manufacturing processes. Finally, TAPO's long term contract assures access to advanced and most capable commercial IC technologies.
TAPO has established a contractual relationship with GLOBALFOUNDRIES U.S. 2 LLC (GF US2) to produce advanced microelectronics parts in a Trusted environment. GF US2 maintains domestic facilities, providing capabilities to the government with yearly options through 2033. Other facilities are currently under review including sources for design, mask manufacture, packaging, test and fabrication. TAPO brokers cost-effective access to Trusted suppliers of customized leading edge microelectronic technologies in order to improve the security of mission-critical U.S. Government information and operations.
TAPO resources are made available for government use only and therefore access requests require a valid government sponsor. We hope you will discover in the following pages some feature or aspect of TAPO services that will be of benefit to your mission.
*Quote from Michael Wynne, former US Secretary of the Air Force (27 January 2004)