White House budget director Jacob Lew reportedly has signed off on critical cloud security guidance, known as FedRAMP, which may be released as early as next week, according to a Federal News Radio report.
The Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration have been working on FedRAMP to establish governmentwide security certification for cloud services -- remotely-provided data storage and computing. The long-awaited memo from the Office of Management and Budget will launch the complex process that eventually will lead to vendor certification for cloud services provided to all federal agencies.
OMB declined to say whether Lew had reviewed the guidance but spokeswoman Moira Mack told Federal News Radio, "The administration is in the process of finalizing the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program and we anticipate it will be completed and released before the end of the calendar year."
Earlier this month, the National Institute for Standards and Technology released a draft Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap that promotes standardization among cloud products and services so agencies can more easily navigate vendors offerings.
Without those standards, agencies may invest in major cloud programs that are quickly made obsolete by a superior competitor or get locked into overpriced services because of high switching costs, according to the draft.
Katherine McIntire Peters
Katherine Peters leads editorial strategy and operations for Nextgov. She previously was a senior correspondent for Government Executive magazine, where she covered defense, homeland security and energy. Prior to joining Government Executive in 1995, she covered U.S. military operations and training for Army Times. She also worked as a writer and technical editor at both IDC Washington and EDS. She holds a B.A. in English from Elizabethtown College and an M.A. in Journalism from American University.
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