#fedramp

Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) compliance costs typically range from $450,000 to over $2 million and take 12 to 18 months to achieve, time your competitors are using to capture government contracts. While you’re spending months configuring FIPS cryptography, hardening security baselines, and navigating 400+ security controls, your competitors are already shipping to…

Teams are continuously challenged to provide creative solutions while maintaining the highest security standards in the difficult field of federal software development. It is easy to become overwhelmed by the intricacy of maintaining consistent development environments, scaling teams, and managing infrastructure. Devin Dickerson, Principal Analyst at Forrester, highlighted the findings of a commissioned TEI study on the effects of Google Cloud Workstations on the software development lifecycle in a recent webinar hosted by Forrester. The study focused on how these workstations can improve security, consistency, and agility while lowering expenses and risks.

The Numbers: A Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) Study

According to a TEI study that Forrester Consulting commissioned for Google Cloud in April 2024, cloud workstations have a big influence on development teams:

Executive Synopsis

Complex onboarding procedures, erratic workflow settings, and local code storage policies are common obstacles faced by organizations trying to grow their development teams. These issues hinder productivity and jeopardize business security. As a result, businesses are looking for a solution that gives developers a reliable and safe toolkit without requiring expensive on-premises resources.

Google Cloud Workstations give developers access to a safe, supervised development environment that streamlines onboarding and boosts workflow efficiency. Administrators and platform teams make preset workstations available to developers via browser or local IDE, allowing them to perform customisation as needed. To help developers solve code problems and create apps more quickly, Google Cloud Workstations come with a built-in interface with Gemini Code Assist, an AI-powered collaborator.

Forrester Consulting was hired by Google to carry out a Total Economic Impact (TEI) research to investigate the possible return on investment (ROI) that businesses could achieve through the use of Google Cloud Workstations. One This study aims to give readers a methodology for assessing the possible financial impact that cloud workstations may have on their companies.

Productivity gains for developers of 30%: Bottlenecks are removed via AI-powered solutions like Gemini Code Assist, pre-configured environments, and simplified onboarding.

Three-year 293% ROI: Cost savings and increased productivity make the investment in cloud workstations pay for itself quickly.

Department of Defense Experience

The industry expert described a concerning event that occurred while he was in the Navy: a contract developer lost his laptop while on the road, which may have exposed private data and put national security at risk. This warning story emphasizes how important it is to have safe cloud-based solutions, such as Google Cloud Workstations. Workstations reduce the possibility of lost or stolen devices and safeguard sensitive data by centralizing development environments and doing away with the requirement for local code storage. They also improve security and operational efficiency by streamlining onboarding procedures and guaranteeing that new developers have immediate access to safe, standardized environments.

Streamlining Government IT Modernization with Google Cloud Workstations

Google Cloud Workstations provide a powerful solution made especially to ease the difficulties government organizations encounter when developing software today:

Simplified Cloud-Native Development: Reduce the overhead of maintaining several development environments by managing and integrating complicated toolchains, dependencies, and cloud-native architectures with ease.

Decreased Platform Team Overhead: Simplify the processes for infrastructure provisioning, developer onboarding and offboarding, and maintenance to free up important resources for critical projects.

Standardized development environments reduce the infamous “works on my machine” issue and promote smooth teamwork by guaranteeing uniformity and repeatability across teams.

Enhanced Security & Compliance: Use FedRAMP to meet and surpass the strict federal security and compliance requirements. Comprehensive data protection is achieved by centralized administration, high authorization, and integrated security controls.

The Way Forward

Now FedRAMP High Authorized, Google Cloud Workstations are more than just a technical advancement they are a calculated investment in the creativity, security, and productivity of teams. Government agencies may save money, simplify processes, and free up developers to concentrate on what they do best creating innovative solutions that benefit the country by adopting this cloud-native solution.

FedRAMP

Among many other services, AI, security, and analytics are now mission-ready for FedRAMP High workloads

Following Google Distributed Cloud Hosted’s Top Secret/Secret permission, Google Public Sector today revealed it has accomplished another major milestone: more than 100 other cloud services have now received FedRAMP High authorization.

With Assured Workloads in FedRAMP High settings, U.S. federal customers may now take advantage of cutting-edge enterprise-grade Google Cloud features spanning cybersecurity, analytics, AI, and more. With the new permission, government agencies can now choose from a more contemporary selection of cloud suppliers to support their digital transformation and assist them fulfil their missions through enhanced data analytics capabilities, platform enhancement, infrastructure modernization, and app modernization.

Approved for Cost, Speed, and Innovation Benefits on Commercial Cloud

Significantly, isolated federal clouds are not the only places where the new FedRAMP High permission can be used. This authorization gives government agencies new ways to take advantage of Google’s best-in-class AI capabilities in secure environments across Google Cloud’s current product portfolio. It also aligns with the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) guidance for adopting commercial cloud-based solutions. Security restrictions are integrated into the system by default thanks to Google Cloud’s commitment in secure-by-default infrastructure, negating the need for a conventional, separate government cloud.

With Assured Workloads, users can securely secure and customise sensitive workloads to meet compliance and security needs thanks to Google Cloud’s FedRAMP-authorized services. No physical infrastructure separate from Google’s public cloud data centres is used by Assured Workloads. Rather, it provides an equivalent cost, speed, and innovation benefits of an enterprise-grade commercial cloud with a Software Defined Community Cloud.

FedRAMP

The federal Risk and Authorization Management Programme standardises cloud-based product and service authorization, security evaluation, and monitoring. It was created by the U.S. Federal government. Government-wide programme that provides a standardised, reusable approach to security assessment and authorization for cloud computing products and services that process unclassified information used by agencies,” it defined by Congress in 2022.

Except for some on-premise private clouds, all federal agency cloud deployments and service models must adhere to it standards at the proper risk impact level (Low, Moderate, or High).

Customers must choose Assured Workloads and Assured Support (High only) if they want to use Google Cloud services that are compliant with FedRAMP Moderate or High levels hosting.

Google Cloud’s Compliance with FedRAMP

The Department of Defence (DoD), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the General Services Administration (GSA), and other agencies as determined by the GSA Administrator and the FedRAMP director comprise the FedRAMP Board, which was formerly known as the Joint Authorization Board.

FedRAMP Moderate and FedRAMP High Authority to Operate (ATO) have been granted by the FedRAMP Board to Google Cloud infrastructure and certain Google Cloud Services Offerings (CSOs). Google Cloud regularly applies to the Board for FedRAMP Moderate and High clearances for additional services.

Customers under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) can obtain the following additional FedRAMP compliance paperwork from Google Cloud:

Customer Responsibility Matrix (CRM) for FedRAMP

The System Security Plan (SSP) for Google Cloud

Reports on penetration tests and other materials

You can obtain access to this content with the assistance of google cloud’s sales team or your Google Cloud agent.

Government clients can also use the FedRAMP Programme Management Office’s package request form to request Google’s FedRAMP package.

Purchase terms and conditions flow down from google cloud’s partners for customers who make purchases through a Google partner.

FedRAMP compliance for Google Workspace

Users of Google Workspace can use it in accordance with numerous international and U.S. federal government regulations for cloud security and privacy.Google Workspace has FedRAMP High authorization and ISO 27017, 27018, and 27001 certifications. It’s also audited to AICPA Service Organisation Control (SOC) standards.

FedRAMP High Readiness for GCVE

The Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) High Readiness Assessment Report (RAR), which was supplied by a third-party assessment organisation (3PAO), was reviewed by the FedRAMP Programme Management Office (PMO) in 2023. Given the review’s excellent findings and the absence of any significant capability flaws, GCVE has been approved as a FedRAMP High Ready offering (FedRAMP Package ID FR2405153785).

The US federal government is informed that GCVE has a strong chance of receiving a FedRAMP Authorization when it achieves it’s strong Ready status. Additionally, GCVE is audited in accordance with the Service Organisation Control (SOC) requirements of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and certified against ISO 27017, 27018, 27001, and PCI-DSS.

FedRAMP high vs Moderate

The security measures are integrated and pre-configured to allow customers to achieve different compliance levels without requiring a traditional separated government cloud architecture, thanks to Google Cloud’s commitment in google cloud’s security-by-default infrastructure.

Assured Workloads are required for customers wishing to use Google Cloud to deploy their products in FedRAMP Moderate and High settings. With Google Cloud services, users may use Assured Workloads to securely configure and safeguard sensitive workloads in order to meet compliance and security requirements. Assured Workloads’ public cloud data centres are not connected to any physical infrastructure. Rather, it provides a Software Defined Community Cloud with advantages in terms of cost, speed, and innovation.

FedRAMP security measures are implemented by FedRAMP-authorized services made available through Assured Workloads, enabling clients to leverage Google Cloud’s capabilities to suit their organisational requirements. Through Assured Workloads Monitoring, Assured Workloads additionally offers insight into it’s workload compliance. With the use of this technology, you may identify and address compliance issues and give auditors control attestations regarding the status of your compliance.

Assured Workloads provides the following essential FedRAMP High controls by default for clients handling FedRAMP High government data, in addition to the controls fulfilled by the Google Cloud infrastructure FedRAMP High ATO.

barriers to keep FedRAMP High customer data within the United States; technical support personnel restricted to FedRAMP-adjudicated workers within the United States; encryption consistent with FIPS-140-2 both in transit and at rest; and personnel access controls for individuals with regular access to customer data

Only it-compliant goods and services are permitted. The FedRAMP Moderate and High standards are supported by the logical segmentation of the in-scope compliance boundary.

FedRAMP High and Moderate Data Hosting on Google Workspace

Customers can host FedRAMP Moderate and High data by utilising Google Workspace’s FedRAMP High ATO. When deploying Google Workspace in FedRAMP Moderate and High environments, customers must activate the it-authorized services that fulfil the corresponding permission requirements. Find out how to enable or disable a Google Workspace service.

Furthermore, FedRAMP High compliance and alignment with the customer’s own ATO are made possible by the integrated security controls and feature sets included in Google Workspace Business and Enterprise editions. Google Workspace customers can meet it’s data residency requirements using a Data Region policy.

How to Get FedRAMP ATO

Government data on Google Cloud may be considered by clients seeking an Authority to Operate (ATO). The following benchmarks should be taken into account by organisations in order to obtain an ATO on Google Cloud:

Ascertain whether FedRAMP Moderate or FedRAMP High Select Assured Workloads are needed for the in-scope data (FedRAMP Moderate is part of the free tier, while FedRAMP High requires a premium membership). Services on Google Cloud

Choose your Google Cloud FedRAMP border.

Set up your workloads in compliance with it requirements, the Customer Responsibility Matrix, the Shared Responsibility Model, and the services that are within the scope of Google Cloud.

Engage a third-party assessment organisation (3PAO) to conduct an audit.

Send your package for approval and review to the Federal Agency or FedRAMP Board.