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U.S. Office of Management and Budget released a memo today establishing a program to reduce "duplicative efforts, inconsistencies and cost inefficiencies when assessing and authorizing cloud systems." The initiative called, Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), is aimed to develop a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services through standardized security requirements and controls.

"FedRAMP is a government-wide effort, and represents the efforts of the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the General Services Administration (GSA), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), amongst many others."

Some key FedRAMP benefits include:

• Saves significant cost, time and resources — do once, use many times
• Improves real-time security visibility
• Supports risk-based security management
• Provides transparency between government and cloud service providers (CSPs)
• Improves trustworthiness, reliability, consistency, and quality of the federal security authorization process

The full policy meme is located here on CIO.gov website.

Related topics: Cloud Computing, Data Center, Policy & Regulation, Security