The 2023 National Cybersecurity Strategy requires acceleration of your agency’s mission to go boldly into the 128-bit address space universe with greater speed and urgency. IPv6-only (Native IPv6) is the addressing standard for the U.S. Federal Government, providing the additional foundation towards a Zero Trust enabled infrastructure. The time is now to accelerate your agency’s journey – not because “it’s required” by the OMB Mandate – but accelerating your journey is an opportunity to increase security, decrease complexity, and facilitate innovation in support of your agency’s mission and objectives.
A lot has been happening this year, and with additional enablement from Cisco’s Country Digital Acceleration Program, Cisco has been busy providing enhanced capabilities and services designed to assist Government customers to develop plans and policies and implement capabilities and architectures on their journey to the 128-bit universe.
Make sure you have a map for your journey
Before slamming your foot down the technology accelerator pedal, most agencies and organizations ask us for help to get their arms around educating their team, developing a transition strategy, planning their new architecture, and then how to accelerate transformation with automation and proven methodologies. For this essential first step, Cisco has enriched our support for customers by updating and significantly enhancing the technical IPv6 training materials and resources for customers, Cisco engineers, and our global partner network. Available through Cisco Learning Partners, the updated IPv6 Fundamentals, Design, and Deployment v4.0 course is an instructor-led course (including lab work) presented to customers and partners tailored for network engineers and technicians that are working in the Enterprise and Government sectors to enhance their knowledge and skills to take full advantage of IPv6 features.
Also customer-focused, at Cisco Live U.S. this year, we notably boosted the number of Customer IPv6 training sessions focused on the Federal Mandate, including participation by senior U.S. Government personnel. For customers implementing Cisco’s extensive unified communications and collaboration capabilities, an IPv6 Deployment Guide has been updated to provide recommendations and help you navigate the IPv6 transition for your Cisco Collaboration network.
Tailored for public sector customers, the Cisco US Public Sector team has stood up an IPv6 Learning Lab to help customers better understand how to take advantage of all the capabilities that operating in this new universe provides. Along with these IPv6-focused Demo-Labs, we’ve published new planning resources designed for Government IT leaders:
- The Cisco quick-guide for Transitioning to IPv6 for Security, Efficiency, and Modernization
- Cisco’s journey map detailing the IPv6 Customer Journey for Public Sector Organizations.
Cisco has also created an integrated services partnership with HexaBuild to provide a direct, tailored professional services engagement for focused IPv6 training, IPv6 address planning, and IPv6 network/IT environment audits to help your agency granularly define and accelerate your journey.
Accelerating architecture implementation
With your journey charted, Cisco technologies like Segment Routing over IPv6 (SRv6) and IPv6-validated designs will accelerate the transformation of your agency’s architecture and take advantage of IPv6 technology with greater simplicity, flexibility, and security at scale. The Cisco’s solutions team has recently updated our Cisco Validated Solution: IPv6 Integration with Cisco SD-Access, SD-WAN, and Firepower providing a software-defined, cross-architectural design for multiple domains for customers to enable IPv6-only clients keeping the underlay infrastructure dual stack during transition while migrating to a single-stack IPv6 architecture. Stay tuned for an updated and expanded Government-focused IPv6 Validated Solution coming early in 2024.
Beyond the U.S. Federal Mandate, with all the rapid changes and additions to the internet and enterprise networks – smart building systems, increase in IoT devices, hybrid work, and massive numbers of mobile devices – the status quo is no longer an option and Cisco is committed to helping all customers transition to IPv6 for simplicity, efficiency, and modernization. Cisco recently sponsored the 128th Episode of the IPv6 Buzz Podcast to discuss how Cisco is helping customers tackle some of the transition challenges and how Cisco driving innovation and investments in IPv6.
Accelerating Native-IPv6 capabilities for our Government customers has been augmented by Cisco’s Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) Program, a global program designed to collaborate with government, academic, and private sector leaders to build sustainable, secure, and inclusive communities powered by ethical and innovative technology solutions. Cisco CDA recognized the opportunity to accelerate and enhance many of these IPv6-focused efforts. It’s part of the Cisco CDA mission, powering an inclusive future by unlocking the value of digitization, helping to accelerate our Government customers on their journey as they go boldly into the new IPv6 universe and realize its tremendous benefits.
Start accelerating your journey today and learn more via the following resources
- Cisco Validated Solution: IPv6 Integration with Cisco SD-Access, SD-WAN, and Firepower
- The Cisco quick-guide for Transitioning to IPv6 for Security, Efficiency, and Modernization
- Cisco’s journey map detailing the IPv6 Customer Journey for Public Sector Organizations
- Converged SDN Transport SRv6
- USGv6-r1 Product Registry
Great to see Cisco leading this stage of Internet Protocol adoption with a very noce set of services and features to assist their customer base.