Now that the deadline for the CISA Secure Software Development form is quickly approaching, organizations are working to ensure they get their attestation in order—that includes FedRAMP Cloud Service Providers (CSPs).

With the deadlines for the newly incorporated Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA) Secure Software Development Attestation Form looming, organizations supplying government-used software must get their ducks in a row to ensure compliance with these requirements.

In a rapidly transforming digital landscape, private organizations aren’t the only ones attempting to protect themselves from evolving cyber threats—governments are too. In the United States, FedRAMP and StateRAMP have risen to prominence as “gatekeeper” frameworks to doing work with those levels of American government, and on the opposite side of the globe, Australia has IRAP.

If you’re considering undergoing a FedRAMP High Assessment, you must understand that this is the most rigorous baseline among the standard FedRAMP options, making it a daunting—if necessary—endeavor. What would likely help is knowing what’s coming in more detail so that you can better prepare.

When FedRAMP issued Revision 5 in May 2023, the changes included a new requirement for a red team exercise in addition to the already-mandated penetration test. Now that Rev 5 is officially being enforced as of 2024, organizations pursuing FedRAMP Authorization must get this new obligation right.

In the latest revision of documents pertinent to the ongoing CMMC countdown, NIST SP 800-171 R3 has been released. Though there were only a handful of changes in this new version, there were some significant ones regarding the assessment practices and their presentation that those monitoring the progress of CMMC should know.

With the introduction of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program, contractors working with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) will be required to meet a certain level of cybersecurity maturity ensuring the protection of the involved sensitive information and data, specifically controlled unclassified information (CUI) and federal contract information (FCI).

On October 27, 2023, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a draft memorandum titled Modernizing the Federal Risk Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). Savvy readers may have noticed the parallelism of the 2011 and 2023 FedRAMP memorandums to those for FISMA in 2002 and FISMA 2014—for FISMA, the latter memo focused on "Modernization" in comparison with the former one regarding "Management."