70 -- Juniper Hardware

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) plans to procure the ?brand name? Juniper ISG-2000 Firewall to support the current USPTO enterprise firewall architecture. The Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) of 2002 requires all Federal agencies secure their information systems and identifies specific requirements with which agencies must comply in order to achieve that end. The Department of Commerce has addressed these FISMA requirements in its IT Security Program Policy and Minimum Implementation Standards and USPTO must be compliant with that policy. The current USPTO enterprise firewall architecture was designed to support the USPTO Image File Wrapper project. Since then, the USPTO?s firewall requirements have changed to support an expanding ?trusted user? population, which consists of teleworkers, authorized contractors, and government partners. With the increasing demand for remote access and the availability, the current firewall (FW) and Single Socket Layer Virtual Private Network (SSLVPN) architecture needs to be adjusted to an increase of USPTO?s Internet bandwidth to the Optical Carrier ? 3 (OC-3) level. A market survey was conducted to determine the best available firewall and how each of them satisfies our requirements. The ISG-2000 firewalls from Juniper Networks was determined the best product with high performance based on the percentage of the requirements that it meets satisfactorily. This announcement is considered a ?brand name? justification. This acquisition will be conducted utilizing Part 13 of the FAR, Simplified Acquisition procedures, and the test program authorized in FAR subpart 13.5, and the Patent and Trademark Acquisition Guidelines (PTAG) among the existing USPTO Information Technology ID/IQ contractors. No written solicitation will be issued as a result. The point of contact for information regarding this notice is Connie Lum at (571)272-4167, or via E-mail at [email protected].