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 Intelligence Community needed access to state of the art commercial processes, fabrication tools and fabrication services. In so doing, TAPO has effective cost-avoidance advantages by not having to upgrade or replace government owned wafer fabrication tools. 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 long term access to the latest and most capable commercial IC technologies in the world.
