Federal Risk and Authorization Program

Why Trust Techopedia

What Does Federal Risk and Authorization Program Mean?

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.

Advertisements

Techopedia Explains Federal Risk and Authorization Program

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.

Advertisements

Related Terms

Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.