Feds prepare RAMP for cloud

By Brian Robinson

By Brian Robinson

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A new program could make it easier for agencies to get authorization to move to their IT operations to the cloud.

As we all know, the federal government is headed for the cloud, though some parts of it seem to be getting there more slowly than others. Now the Cloud Computing Advisory Council, an offshoot of Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra’s ambitions for government IT, wants to speed things up.

A new program named FedRAMP, which could be up and running in a few months, will try to move things along by providing a single entity through which the government could authorize cloud services for use by agencies.

In an interview with GovInfoSecurity.com, the vice chair of the council, NIST’s Peter Mell, said the details of the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program has been sent to agencies for their blessing, and the program will go into pilot as soon as that is given.

Security is probably the biggest sticking point when it comes to the feds’ use of the cloud, at least the public cloud. Currently, it’s up to each agency to make sure that the cloud it uses is secure enough to store its data and move it around in the cloud.

FedRAMP, which follows NIST’s most recent guidance on government security, would apparently create the first agreed governmentwide security requirements for cloud services, among other things.

I don’t think I’m the only one who's wondering how enthusiastic individual agencies are about moving to the cloud, given all the other IT stuff they have to contend with. But the above is just one more indication of the administration’s seriousness, at least, along with earlier indications of how fed IT budgets will flow to the cloud.

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