More firms get FedRAMP nod
By
Frank Konkel
Two major players in federal contracting join other providers in the ranks of the cloud-approved.
Add behemoths HP and Lockheed Martin to the short but growing list of companies to achieve provisional compliance with the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), the federal government's standardized approach to cloud security assessments.
On June 6, the General Services Administration announced new Joint Authorization Board (JAB) provisional cloud security authorizations for HP's Enterprise Cloud Services – Virtual Private Cloud (ESC-VPC) and Lockheed Martin's SolaS Cloud Solution.
They join cloud offerings by Autonomic Resources and CGI Federal that achieved provisional authorities to operate (ATOs) under JAB, a board comprised of chief information officers from GSA, the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.
And in May, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) granted Amazon Web Services agency ATOs for its GovCloud and its US East/West offerings, endorsing AWS too as a secure cloud service provider meeting FedRAMP requirements at the moderate impact level.
"These two new Joint Authorization Board provisional authorizations continue to demonstrate the viability of the FedRAMP program," said Dave McClure, Associate Administrator of GSA's Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, in a statement. "With four JAB authorizations and two agency authorizations, we've got some good early examples of the different ways to utilize FedRAMP for an agency's specific security needs."
"As a leader in cyber security and government cloud computing, Lockheed Martin is deeply involved in shaping cloud security standards across the industry," said Stephanie C. Hill, vice president of Lockheed Martin's Information Systems and Global Solutions-Civil business. "Our secure community cloud offering was built FedRAMP ready and has been serving government agencies and other regulated industry customers since 2012."
HP, the world's largest technology company, was assisted in the FedRAMP process by Lunarline, a FedRAMP-accredited third-party assessment organization (3PAO). Lockheed Martin, the largest government contractor in the world, had its independent assessment completed by Coalfire, another FedRAMP-accredited 3PAO.
As with the number of approved cloud service providers, the list of FedRAMP-accredited 3PAOs continues to grow, now up to 20, with three new additions in the past month.
KPMG LLP, as well as small businesses Burke Consortium, Inc. and Dakota Consulting, Inc. were added to the mix, meaning 11 of the 20 approved 3PAOs are small businesses.