The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) is the U.S. government-wide program providing a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization and continuous monitoring for cloud-based services. It uses a “do once, use many times” framework to reduce the costs, time and staff required to conduct agency security assessments. More...

In its recent study, Contracts in the Cloud Promise More Contracts, An Executive’s Guide to Understanding FedRAMP, Bloomberg Government (BGOV) found that Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) holding “a government-wide cloud-services contract, such as CGI … will have an advantage in winning more work because FedRAMP gives them priority in the review process.” More...

Cloud computing is shifting the federal CIO’s responsibility from managing data centers to managing cloud services, especially for cloud security, even when those services are procured outside the CIO’s office. As a result, CIOs must pay close attention to the security controls its agency programs are getting with their cloud infrastructure for web hosting. More...

Moving to the cloud raises unique contingency planning challenges. Cloud providers typically have multiple partners and/or customers with competing demands. In the event of a business interruption or disaster, where do you rank among your cloud provider’s priorities and what can you expect from it? Do your internal resources understand the cloud environment and their tenant obligations, particularly in the event of a contingency?If you’ve already written or are about to write a cloud contingency plan, here are a few “lessons learned” to keep in mind. More...