Page 9 - FCW, June 2017

$436.4 billion is the projected size of the public-sector cloud market
by 2021
FedRAMP gains speed, but true sharing still lags
The time it takes to get a cloud ser- vice approved under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Pro- gram has dropped dramatically since 2014, but federal agencies’ embrace of FedRAMP is still uneven, a new study suggests.
The report, from the cybersecurity management and compliance firm Coal- fire, crunched data from the FedRAMP marketplace and industry cloud service providers. Researchers found that the average time to FedRAMP authoriza- tion is now six months — a 59 per- cent improvement for CSPs that work directly with agencies and a 65 per- cent improvement for those working with the FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board.
“That’s tremendous process improve- ment,” Dave McClure, Coalfire’s chief strategist for federal, told FCW.
He added that a substantial number of FedRAMP-approved CSPs are now relatively small firms. “While FedRAMP is supposedly tailored for large com-
panies that can afford the price tag of going through the process,” roughly 14 percent of the firms had revenues of $10 million or less in 2016, McClure said.
But McClure, who helped launch and champion FedRAMP while leading the General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services and Innova- tive Technologies during the Obama administration, said agency efforts still have a long way to go.
The report estimates that 60 percent of agencies do not yet participate in the program, even though FedRAMP authorization is mandatory for virtually all cloud services used in the federal government. And despite FedRAMP’s stated goal of reusing authorizations to save time and cut costs, more than half of the authorized cloud services are being used by only one or two agencies.
Some of that can be attributed to size and budget — and to incomplete reporting by agencies — but McClure said leadership also contributes to dis- parities in cloud adoption.
Agencies like the Defense Depart- ment and the Department of Health and Human Services have had leaders who “have said they’re aggressively moving to cloud solutions,” he said, while many of the lagging agencies “have culturally been resistant to cloud or skeptical of its use or security.”
The Coalfire report suggests several areas where CSPs can help improve and accelerate the authorization pro- cess, but McClure said changes are needed on the government side as well — above and beyond the steps being taking by the FedRAMP team.
He was optimistic, however, that those changes can be made. Legisla- tion is “brewing on the Hill again on FedRAMP,” he said, and “we want to get these kinds of things built into that legislation if it starts taking shape: more transparency on reporting \[and\] more required reporting so that we truly know how much cloud security we have around government.”
— Troy K. Schneider
EDITOR’S NOTE
Help us find the Rising Stars
Top leaders are important, but it’s the rank-and-file talent that makes agencies run. And for FCW’s Rising Star awards, we’d like your help
in finding the individuals who are doing great things today — and who are likely to be filling the senior slots tomorrow.
The trick, of course, is knowing where to look
because those people are
often in the background, making their bosses look good.
Not sure who qualifies as a Rising Star? We’re looking for early-career phenoms whose leadership, inno-
vation and all-around extra effort are having a powerful and positive impact on federal IT.
Here are five points to remember: 1. Anyone in the federal IT community is eligible: military and civilian, career and politi- cal, contractor, academic and association expert alike.
2. Winners go above and beyond — whatever their level or rank. A fancy job title
is not required, and just doing one’s job well is not enough.
3.You can make multiple nomina- tions. Do so early and often.
4. Impact matters.The judges need
to know not only what a nominee did but also what all that work accomplished.
5. Age does not matter, but nomi- nees must be less than 10 years into their work in the federal IT community.
So if you know someone — or several someones! — who should be considered, nominate him or her at FCW.com/2017risingstars. And please spread the word to your col- leagues so we can get the best pos- sible batch of winners.
—Troy K. Schneider tschneider@fcw.com @troyschneider
June 2017 FCW.COM 7