How FedRAMP Lifts All Cloud Ships

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Wyatt Kash.

If you spend any time listening to what government IT executives are talking about in Washington these days — besides the NSA’s data-collection practices and what everyone should have learned from HealthCare.gov — it’s hard to ignore at least some discussion about secure cloud computing and a federal program called FedRAMP.

Talk to IT executives outside of Washington, however, and it’s evident that discussions about FedRAMP and its impact on cloud service providers are reaching far beyond the Beltway and rippling through the boardrooms of IT services providers. As Amazon Web Services VP Teresa Carlson said in a recent interview: "Cloud companies won’t be able to participate in any [government] procurement or award without being able to achieve the FedRAMP standards."…

For those new to the discussion, FedRAMP is a program cooked up by a group of savvy bureaucrats who grasped the potential of cloud computing, but also understood that, without help in overcoming the government’s own red tape, federal agencies faced a long road to cloud adoption. The reason stems from the fact that every federal agency must assess and certify the security risks of its IT systems. Cloud computing added a new layer of complexity to the government’s security requirements and procurement contracts…

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