With new FedRAMP Rev. 5 baseline changes in effect, this article discusses how those changes work, what they do, and their benefits to Cloud Service Providers.

These days, many questions arise surrounding the security of data and cloud posture: “How did this happen, why did this happen, and can this happen again?” Fortunately, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) exists for non-federal organizations that handle sensitive, confidential government data.

Many cyberattacks succeed due to mistakes by employees and a lack of awareness of basic aspects of cybersecurity. According to the 2022 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 82% of data breaches in 2021 involved the human element.

FedRAMP is a U.S. government-wide program that delivers a standard approach to the security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring of cloud products and services.

NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-53, Revision 5, Security and Privacy Controls for Information Systems and Organizations, represents a multi-year effort to develop the next generation of security and privacy controls needed to strengthen and support .

On May 7, 2021, Colonial Pipeline, Co. was forced to close operations after a ransomware hack was confirmed to have breached their systems. This attack hindered services to the East-coast of the United States and sparked fears of a massive gas shortage to American motorists. This hack greatly compromised Colonial Pipeline’s system integrity and put private data at risk.

Data analytics (DA) involves processes and activities designed to obtain and evaluate data to extract useful information. The results of DA may be used to identify areas of key risk, fraud, errors, or misuse; improve business efficiency, verify process effectiveness, and make more-informed business decisions.

According to Microsoft’s Global Threat Activity Tracker, more than 4.7 million malicious software (or “malware”) incidents were detected in the education industry worldwide in June 2020 – which accounted for more than 60 percent of all the corporate and institutional malware incidents reported during the month, the most affected industry by far. More than 20 universities and charities across the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada reported that they were compromised by a cyberattack.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak in January 2020 and pandemic declaration in late March, organizations and federal agencies have been scrambling to secure their systems and create remote work contingency plans to keep continuity for their business matters.