Cloud technology plays a pivotal role in driving the digital transformation efforts of government agencies as they aim to streamline and enhance their operations. To help the government sector better protect its data in the Cloud, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP®) mandates a standardized approach to security assessment and authorization for cloud products and services, or Cloud Service Offerings (CSOs). CSOs are categorized into one of three impact levels: Low, Moderate, and High; and across three security objectives: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.
At Own, (formerly OwnBackup), our mission is to ensure that no company operating in the Cloud ever loses data. This includes government agencies that increasingly rely on Cloud applications to manage their highly sensitive data.
Last August, we announced that we had reached the “In Process” milestone toward FedRAMP® authorization. Today, we are proud to share that we have achieved FedRAMP® Authorized status at a Moderate Impact Baseline and can now provide data protection services to U.S. Federal Government customers.
Federal agencies are especially susceptible to data loss
Government agencies are a popular target for cyber threats, mainly due to the highly-sensitive nature of that data, as well as the sheer magnitude. Personal information, financial data, and even classified information all fall under their purview– and government agencies often lack the resources or personnel to secure their networks and systems properly. All of this works together to make them easy targets for hackers.
The impact of data loss or corruption within a federal agency is also greater due to the essential services many of these organizations provide. For example, In January, an FAA computer outage caused thousands of flight disruptions in the U.S. Whether the incident was a glitch caused by a damaged database file (as the FAA claimed) or something more malicious, data loss within a federal agency can have significant consequences.
Despite these risks, federal agencies can’t be expected to thwart all cyberattacks on their own. The volume of data that citizens and agencies generate annually is enormous and spreads across many systems and applications. Nor do they have the time or resources to vet and evaluate hundreds of cloud technologies. That’s why these agencies often partner with cloud service providers authorized through the FedRAMP® program, a select group of companies we are happy to say now includes Own.
How Own supports government agencies
Many federal agencies and other government organizations use Salesforce to manage mission-critical data for their citizens and customers. Using a separate AWS GovCloud environment with rigorous security measures that satisfy FedRAMP® requirements, Own Government Cloud (OGC) ensures this data is secure and protected and helps avoid disruptions to your organization's services.
By achieving FedRAMP® status at a Moderate Impact baseline, we help federal government customers:
- Reduce the effects of data loss or corruption
- Proactively monitor data environments and be informed when unexpected changes occur
- Anonymize sensitive data in sandboxes to reduce exposure
- Maintain compliance across data backups
With FedRAMP® authorization complete, Own is ready to help federal governments protect their critical SaaS data. Learn more here or reach out to fedramp@owndata.com
