9th vendor gets FedRAMP approval

Another company has received the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) seal of approval.

Akamai Technologies has been granted provisional approval to offer cloud services to the government after meeting the rigorous requirements of the government's standardized approach to security assessment for cloud services, becoming the ninth vendor to do so.

GCN, a sister publication of FCW, first reported the news Aug. 29, noting Akamai received the FedRAMp Joint Authorization Board's provision authorization, which involves "a thorough review by chief information officers of the General Services Administration, and Homeland Security and Defense departments."

Akamai was assisted through the FedRAMP process by Knowledge Consulting Group, a FedRAMP-accredited third-party assessment organization. Its certified and accredited offerings include content delivery, secure content delivery, HD streaming, NetStorage, global traffic management and enhanced Domain Name System.

GCN reported that 14 of the 15 Cabinet-level agencies already use Akamai's Intelligent Platform, but its FedRAMP approval encourages other agencies to use Akamai as a cloud service provider or as a front-end network to other FedRAMP cloud providers.

Five other cloud providers have been granted provisional authority in addition to Akamai: AT&T, Autonomic Resources, CGI Federal, Hewlett-Packard and Lockheed Martin. 

Three other cloud providers have been granted agency authority to operate, according to GCN: Amazon Web Services' GovCloud and US East/West offerings, each receiving authorization by the Health and Human Services Department earlier this year; and the Department of Agriculture's National Information Technology Center, which has also been granted an authority to operate by the USDA Office of the CIO – the only federal agency to meet FedRAMP's requirements thus far.