Senate vote on FedRAMP reform bill imminent

Bipartisan legislation reforming the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program for cloud service providers is poised to be voted upon by the Senate in the next few weeks following the bill's referral to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs earlier this month, according to FedScoop. Ongoing federal migration to the cloud has pushed the need to update FedRAMP and the reform bill would include a "presumption of adequacy" clause enabling the utilization of authorized systems even without additional verification or oversight, the benefits of which have been emphasized by MITRE Center for Data-Driven Policy Executive Director Dave Powner. "We expect to see a significant uptick in FedRAMP authorization over the coming years thanks to this bill. The uptick in adoption of cloud security standards would happen even without this FedRAMP legislation but it would definitely be less," Power said. However, some have expressed concern over the inadequate funding of the program. "This bill would be stronger if there were funds and resources attached to it that gave it more teeth to execute its mission," said a tech industry association leader.