Observations from the FedRAMP Certification Process

Posted by Scott Charney, Corporate Vice President, Trustworthy Computing, Microsoft

On September 30, Microsoft announced that our public cloud platform, Windows Azure, had been granted Provisional Authorities to Operate (P-ATO) from the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Joint Authorization Board (JAB). The FedRAMP Program Management Office also announced recently that federal agencies can now leverage the P-ATO to support their own agency-specific cloud migration efforts. FedRAMP is a government-wide program administered by the General Services Administration (GSA) that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud services. Agencies are required by the Office of Management and Budget to use FedRAMP to adopt cloud services. Read more