The Federal Risk and Authorization Program (FedRamp) is a government risk management initiative for federal government information systems. The FedRamp program aims to support the goal of delivering cloud computing services to various federal agencies. This in turn will help promote consistent security across federal agencies. FedRamp began operating in June 2012.
The overall goal of the FedRamp program is to avoid redundancy in assessing cloud services for government use. Resources from the U.S. General Services Administration show that goals of the program involve accelerating the adoption of new technologies, achieving security benchmarks and providing more assurance of quality security in these types of services. The program is also intended to help agencies improve automation and continuous data monitoring. As part of the program, cloud service providers furnishing services to government agencies must use third party assessment organizations (3PAOs) to verify compliance with FedRamp.
