FedRAMP Certification Can Help Grow Your Cloud Service Business

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) was designed to support the federal government’s “cloud-first” initiative by making it easier for federal agencies to contract with cloud providers. Like FISMA, DFARS, CJIS, and HIPAA, FedRAMP’s security controls are based on NIST 800-53. If your cloud service business contracts with the U.S. federal government, you are required to comply with FedRAMP. However, with concerns over cloud security deepening in the wake of numerous high-profile cloud breaches, FedRAMP certification may be a worthwhile investment even if your company does not currently contract with the U.S. government.

Benefits of FedRAMP Certification

FedRAMP certification is a long, arduous, and potentially expensive process. Unlike FISMA, which allows organizations to perform their own assessments, FedRAMP certification must be performed by a certified third-party assessment organization (3PAO). However, FedRAMP certification offers many benefits to cloud service providers, including:

• The U.S. government is the single largest buyer of goods and services in the world, and federal agencies are reliable customers that continue to buy even during economic downturns, when private-sector firms cut back. Your company may eventually want to tap this very stable, highly lucrative market.
• The U.S. government is “cloud-first.” To federal agencies, “cloud-first” isn’t just marketing hyperbole; it’s a directive from the White House to “evaluate safe, secure, Cloud Computing options before making any new investments.”
• FedRAMP is “do once, use many times.” Unlike the FISMA standard, which requires organizations to seek an Authority to Operate (ATO) from each individual federal agency they do business with, a FedRAMP ATO qualifies a cloud service provider to do business with any federal agency.
• The FedRAMP certification process will uncover your risks and vulnerabilities and improve your company’s data security. All of your customers will benefit from the security controls you put in place to comply with FedRAMP – and this is a big selling point. Private-sector companies know how arduous the FedRAMP certification process is, and they see it as a gold standard of data security.
• You will be able to better compete in the highly competitive cloud services market. As cloud services companies multiply, and concerns over cloud security grow, FedRAMP certification will help your company stand out in a crowded marketplace.
• Completing the FedRAMP certification process will make other security audits easier. FedRAMP controls are based on NIST 800-53, which is the basis for numerous other standards that your company likely needs to comply with, including HIPAA, DFARS, and CJIS.

Choosing a 3PAO

The FedRAMP compliance process begins with selecting the right 3PAO. In addition to FedRAMP experience, make sure that your 3PAO has expertise in cloud security and has worked with private-sector firms as well as government agencies. It is also critical that your 3PAO be well-versed in FISMA, as FedRAMP maps to the same NIST 800-53 standards that FISMA does.

Also make sure to ask questions about the tools your 3PAO will be using during the certification process; specifically, will the 3PAO be using spreadsheets or modern IRM GRC software? Continuum GRC’s proprietary IT Audit Machine, a revolutionary IRM GRC software package that utilizes pre-loaded, drag-and-drop modules, takes the pain and high costs out of the FedRAMP certification process. Some of our clients have saved up to 1,000% over traditional FedRAMP assessment methods.

The cyber security experts at Continuum GRC have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting your organization from security breaches. Continuum GRC offers full-service and in-house risk assessment and risk management subscriptions, and we help companies all around the world sustain proactive cyber security programs.

Continuum GRC is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-6207 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization protect its systems and ensure compliance with all applicable laws, frameworks, and standards.

Verizon, Trump Hotels, and the RNC are Among the Recent Victims of Third-Party Breaches

Even if your own cyber security is up to snuff, your organization could be at risk of third-party breaches if your business partners are not as diligent as you are. Verizon just learned this lesson the hard way after one of its vendors, telephonic software and data company NICE Systems, left the information of 14 million Verizon customers on a misconfigured Amazon server.

This incident did not happen in a vacuum. Other recent third-party breaches affecting major organizations include:

• The Republican National Committee (RNC), whose data analytics vendor exposed the data of 198 million voters after leaving it on – you guessed it – a misconfigured Amazon server.
• Trump Hotels, which, along with chains such as Hard Rock and Four Seasons, had its customer data exposed after a breach at its reservations vendor, Sabre Corporation.
• A number of Google employees were also impacted by the Sabre breach because Google’s third-party travel management company used Sabre’s systems – meaning this breach happened at the third-party vendor of a third-party vendor.
• Netflix, which had the upcoming season of its hit series Orange Is the New Black dumped online after a hacker breached a third-party post production house, Larson Studios. It has since been discovered that the hackers got into Larson’s systems by taking advantage of the fact that the company was running an antiquated version of Windows.

Third-Party Breaches Common in the Age of Outsourcing

Once a dirty word, outsourcing is a normal part of doing business in the 21^st century. Organizations of all sizes routinely retain the services of third-party business partners to take care of all manner of functions outside their core competencies, from cloud storage to customer billing to payroll services. Unfortunately, because so many business functions are now outsourced, third-party breaches have more common than primary data breaches; an estimated 63% of all enterprise breaches can be traced back to a third-party vendor.

If one of your vendors gets hacked, don’t expect to be able to point fingers and pass the buck. Even if your business partner makes a colossal mistake, your organization will be the one that’s held responsible by your customers, any affected banks, and regulatory bodies. The infamous Target breach, which cost the company nearly $300 million and shook up its C-suite, involved a third-party vendor.

Protecting Your Organization from Third-Party Breaches

As with primary cyber attacks, the best way to deal with third-party breaches is to prevent them from happening in the first place. While you cannot dictate to your business partners how they should run their firms, as their paying customer, your enterprise is not without recourse:

• Understand your enterprise ecosystem so that you can build risk profiles for all of your business partners. Who are your business partners, and what service does each provide? What level of access do they have to your data and systems?
• Understand who your vendors are subcontracting to and whether they will have access to your data. As in Google’s case, a breach at a third-party vendor used by one of your third-party vendors can come back to haunt your organization.
• Include cyber security provisions in your vendor contracts, including security measures your business partners must take regarding their own vendors.
• Give your vendors the minimum level of access to your systems and data that they need, and no more.
• Only do business with IT services vendors who have released AICPA SOC / SSAE16 reports and/or who have important IT security certifications such as NIST, ISO, or FedRAMP. These organizations have undergone rigorous security audits and have proven their commitment to the highest levels of data security.

Further to the above, if your business provides IT services to other businesses, obtaining the appropriate data security certifications is a wise investment that will help you instill trust in your customers. Continuum GRC’s IT Audit Machine (ITAM IT audit software) RegTech solution empowers organizations to get and maintain compliance the easy way, with self-help modules covering numerous compliance standards, including FedRAMP, SSAE 16, AT 101, CJIS, DFARS, COBIT, ISO 27001, ISO 27002, ISO 27005, SOX, FFIEC, PCI, GLBA, HIPAA, CMS, NERC CIP and other federal and state mandates.

The cyber security experts at Continuum GRC have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting your organization from security breaches. Continuum GRC offers full-service and in-house risk assessment and risk management subscriptions, and we help companies all around the world sustain proactive cyber security programs.

Continuum GRC is proactive cyber security®. Call +1 (888) 896-6207 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization protect its systems and ensure compliance with all applicable laws, frameworks, and standards.

Schedule some time with our Superheroes for a Free Assessment!

We get it. We completely understand why you still use Excel as an assessment and audit tool. We suffered through it just the same but we believe that working smarter and not harder which is why we invented ITAM IT audit software.

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Typical usage includes Audit and Compliance Assessments associated with FedRAMP, PCI DSS, HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley, ISO 27001 and all others; Risk Management Assessments associated with ISO 27005, NIST Special Publications and all others; and Governance and Policy Development to describe a few but not all possible use cases.

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