US Army Certificate of Networthiness (CON)

Discussions
#1

Does any one know anything about the CON process?

http://www.atsc.army.mil/tadlp/implementation/config/networthiness.asp

E.g. Whats needed, forms to be filled in, things tested etc etc.

As far as I know its an internal US Army only thing and the vendors are not any part of it - but its hard to get exact details. One customer did mention it and aluded to it being a months long painful form filling exercise and that scared him off (insert comments about why does it cost the military $1000 to buy a $5 wrench here)

Apparently a few of my companies products already have a CON certificate but I can’t even find out which ones - is there anything like a publicly accessible list?

#2

According to the right hand side of that page, there is a list provided on the site “Army Knowledge Online” (and directly linked) - which is restricted to US Army personnel. So no, there is no public list by the looks.

#3

@Rhino
Did you ever find out any more about this? It appears that PerfectTablePlan had a CON, but it has now expired. Military customers are starting to asking me about why PerfectTablePlan doesn’t have a CON, but I have no visibility into the process.

#4

Found a little more - but not a lot!

Its an internal only program - there is zero visibility or input from outside.

  • US Army customers can see list of existing products with CoN.
  • Not all US army personnel will be aware of or understand what its about.
  • They can submit a request to add a new product and there is some form filling and a month or so wait.
  • My contact did ask for a bit of help filling in a few areas of the form but it was all real basic info - nothing complex at all (can’t remember exactly as was done over the phone but questions like ‘what information does this app transmit to other systems’, answer = nothing in my case).
  • At no point did whomever evaluated the app for the CoN get in touch to ask more detailed questions - god only knows what they actually do.
  • The CoN is valid for that version only for 3 years. (my contact did an application for version 2.*, not sure if this is really within the spirit of the rules but appeared to get through!)
  • Also as with most overly bureaucratic organisations - not everyone follows the rules - allegedly;)

TLDR: If it doesn’t have a CoN (or CoN has expired) its just because no one has requested one in a while - only US Army personnel can request a CoN, its not something that you can arrange.

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#5

Ok, that is pretty much what I had gathered. Hopefully somebody in the US Army wants my software enough to fill out the forms!

It appears the US Air Force has a completely different certification system.

#6

I’m not entirely sure the Army people understand * as “catch all” like we computer nerds do. :slight_smile:

#7

The CoN of our COTS software product expired last November. What’s the process to renew in 2020? CMMC-NIST process?

#8

As far as I am aware vendors have no control over or visibility into the process. You just have to hope someone wants your software enough to renew. I suggest you reach out to a few friendly military customers.

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