Glossary

A vulnerability that the provider does not intend to fully mitigate or remediate, OR that has not or will not be fully mitigated or remediated within the maximum overdue period recommended or required by FedRAMP.

The type of significant change that does not routinely recur but does not introduce substantive potential security risks that need to be assessed in depth.

Has the meaning given in 44 U.S. Code § 3502 (1), which is "any executive department, military department, Government corporation, Government controlled corporation, or other establishment in the executive branch of the Government (including the Executive Office of the President), or any independent regulatory agency, but does not include—(A) the Government Accountability Office; (B) Federal Election Commission; (C) the governments of the District of Columbia and of the territories and possessions of the United States, and their various subdivisions; or (D) Government-owned contractor-operated facilities, including laboratories engaged in national defense research and production activities."

All entities who participate in the FedRAMP assessment of a cloud service offering in the context of a FedRAMP program authorization. This always includes FedRAMP and any FedRAMP recognized independent assessor contracted by the provider to perform a FedRAMP assessment.

All entities whose interests are affected directly by activity related to a specific cloud service offering in the context of a FedRAMP authorization. This always includes FedRAMP and any agency customer who is operating the cloud service offering, but may include additional parties depending on agreements made by the cloud service provider (such as consultants or third-party assessors). Potential agency customers or third-party cloud service providers should also be included in most cases but this is not a mandatory requirement under FedRAMP as ultimately the cloud service provider may choose who they wish to do business with.

The collective information required by FedRAMP for initial and ongoing assessment and authorization of a cloud service offering, including the authorization package.

Has meaning from 44 USC § 3607 (b)(8) which is "the essential information that can be used by an agency to determine whether to authorize the operation of an information system or the use of a designated set of common controls for all cloud computing products and services authorized by FedRAMP."

A severe negative impact on an organization caused by the loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability of its information. At a minimum, this includes effects that would likely: (i) result in a severe degradation in the availability or performance of services within the cloud service offering for 24+ hours; OR (ii) directly or indirectly result in unauthorized access, disclosure, or modification of a majority of the federal customer data stored within the cloud service offering.

A specific, packaged cloud computing product or service provided by a cloud service provider that can be used by a customer. FedRAMP assessment and authorization of the cloud computing product or service is based on the Minimum Assessment Scope.

Changes to information resources that cause deviations from the intended and assessed state; common forms of drift include changes to configurations, deployed software, privileges, running processes, and availability.

A detected vulnerability that is not actually present in an exploitable state in the information resource; this includes situations where vulnerable software or code exist on an machine-based information resource but are not loaded, running, or otherwise in an operating state required for exploitation.

All electronic information, content, and materials that an agency or its authorized users upload, store, or otherwise provide to a cloud service for processing or storage. This does NOT include account information, service metadata, analytics, telemetry, or other similar metadata generated by the cloud service provider.

An email address that meets the requirements outlined in the FedRAMP Security Inbox requirements.

A vulnerability where the likelihood of exploitation or potential adverse impact of exploitation has been reduced from the original evaluation until either are negligible, but the vulnerability is still detected.

Has the plain language meaning inclusive of any possible action taken with information, such as access, collect, control, create, display, disclose, disseminate, dispose, maintain, manipulate, process, receive, review, store, transmit, use... etc.

The type of significant change that is likely to increase or decrease the impact level categorization for the entire cloud service offering (e.g. from low to moderate or from high to moderate).

Has the meaning given in 44 USC § 3552 (b)(2) applied to federal customer data, which is "an occurrence that (A) actually or imminently jeopardizes, without lawful authority, the integrity, confidentiality, or availability of [federal customer data]; or (B) constitutes a violation or imminent threat of violation of law, security policies, security procedures, or acceptable use policies [related to federal customer data]."

Has the meaning from 44 USC § 3502 (6): "information and related resources, such as personnel, equipment, funds, and information technology." This includes any aspect of the cloud service offering, both technical and managerial, including everything that makes up the business of the offering from non-machine-based information resources like organizational policies, procedures, employees, etc. to machine-based information resources like hardware, software, cloud services, code, etc.

The first full assessment of a cloud service offering seeking FedRAMP authorization, coordinated by the provider with all necessary assessors, that results in a FedRAMP authorization.

A vulnerability in a machine-based information resource that might be exploited or otherwise triggered by a payload originating from a source on the public internet; this includes machine-based information resources that have no direct route to/from the internet but receive payloads or otherwise take action triggered by internet activity.

Has the meaning given in CISA Binding Operational Directive 22-01, which is any vulnerability identified in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

A reasonable degree of probability based on context.

A vulnerability that is not fully mitigated, AND is reachable by a likely threat actor, AND a likely threat actor with knowledge of the vulnerability would likely be able to gain unauthorized access, cause harm, disrupt operations, or otherwise have an undesired adverse impact within the cloud service offering by exploiting the vulnerability.

A minor negative impact on an organization caused by the loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability of its information. At a minimum, this includes effects that would likely: (i) result in degradation of the availability or performance of services within the cloud service offering for a minority of relevant users; OR (ii) directly or indirectly result in unauthorized access, disclosure, or modification of a small amount of the federal customer data stored within the cloud service offering by only a few relevant users.

Any information technology information resource—including systems, processes, software, hardware, services, cloud-native capabilities, and any other such capability, component, or resource—that relies primarily on mechanical or electronic devices (i.e. computers) for operation.

Has the meaning from 44 U.S. Code § 3502 (18) which is "the term "machine-readable", when used with respect to data, means data in a format that can be easily processed by a computer without human intervention while ensuring no semantic meaning is lost"

A small negative impact on an organization caused by the loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability of its information. At a minimum, this includes effects that would likely: (i) result in minor inconvenience when accessing or using services within the cloud service offering; OR (ii) result in degradation of the availability or performance of services within the cloud service offering for only a few relevant users.

A regular report that is supplied by FedRAMP Authorized cloud service providers to agency customers, aligned to the requirements and recommendations in the FedRAMP Collaborative Continuous Monitoring process.

A vulnerability that the provider intends to fully mitigate or remediate but has not or will not do so within the time frames recommended or required by FedRAMP.

A vulnerability where the likelihood or potential adverse impact of exploitation has been reduced from the original evaluation but the risk of exploitation still exists and the vulnerability is still detected.

Follow-on assessments of a cloud service offering focused on Key Security Indicators, coordinated by the provider with all necessary assessors, to maintain a FedRAMP authorization or change its impact categorization.

The systematic and persistent process of validating that information resources within a cloud service offering are operating in a secure manner as expected by the goals and objectives outlined by the provider against FedRAMP Key Security Indicators.

Occurring in a firm, steady way that is repeated over a long period of time in spite of obstacles or difficulties. Persistent activities may vary between actors, may occur irregularly, and may include interruptions or waiting periods between cycles. These attributes of persistent activities should be intentional, understood, and documented; the status of persistent activities will always be known.

The estimated cumulative effect of unauthorized access, disruption, harm, or other adverse impact to agencies that _likely_ could result if a threat actor exploits a _vulnerability_ in the _cloud service offering_; as estimated following FedRAMP recommendations and requirements.

An account with elevated privileges that enables administrative functions over some aspect of the cloud service offering that may affect the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of information beyond those given to normal users; levels of privilege may vary wildly.

Without unnecessary delay.

A regular synchronous meeting hosted by a FedRAMP Authorized cloud service provider for agency customers, aligned to the requirements and recommendations in the FedRAMP Collaborative Continuous Monitoring process.

Performing the activity on a consistent, predictable, and repeated basis, at set intervals, automatically if possible, following a documented plan. These intervals may vary as appropriate between different requirements.

A vulnerability that has been neutralized or eliminated and is no longer detected.

The type of significant change that regularly and routinely recurs as part of ongoing operations, vulnerability mitigation, or vulnerability remediation.

A significant negative impact on an organization caused by the loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability of its information. At a minimum, this includes effects that would likely: (i) result in intermittent or ongoing degradation in the availability or performance of services within the cloud service offering, causing unpredictable interruptions to operations for 12+ hours; OR (ii) directly or indirectly result in unauthorized access, disclosure, or modification of a minority of the federal customer data stored within the cloud service offering.

Has the meaning given in NIST SP 800-37 Rev. 2 which is "a change that is likely to substantively affect the security or privacy posture of a system."

Any information resource that is not entirely included in the assessment for the cloud service offering seeking authorization.

The most privileged account with the highest level of access within a cloud service offering for a customer organization, typically with complete control over all aspects of the cloud service offering, including managing resources, users, access, privileges, and the account itself.

The type of significant change that introduces substantive potential security risks that are likely to affect existing risk determinations and must be assessed in depth.

A secure repository or service used by cloud service providers to store and share authorization data. Trust centers are the complete and definitive source for authorization data and must meet the requirements outlined in the FedRAMP Authorization Data Sharing process to be FedRAMP-compatible.

Has the meaning given to "security vulnerability" in 6 USC § 650 (25), which is "any attribute of hardware, software, process, or procedure that could enable or facilitate the defeat of [...] management, operational, and technical controls used to protect against an unauthorized effort to adversely affect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of an information system or its information." This includes gaps in Rev5 controls and 20x Key Security Indicators, software vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, exposures, weak credentials, insecure services, and all other such potential weaknesses in protection (intentional or unintentional).

The systematic process of discovering and identifying security vulnerabilities in information resources through assessment, scanning, threat intelligence, vulnerability disclosure mechanisms, bug bounties, supply chain monitoring, and other capabilities. This process includes the initial discovery of a vulnerability's existence and the determination of affected information resources within a cloud service offering.

The systematic process of tracking, evaluating, mitigating, monitoring, remediating, assessing exploitation, reporting, and otherwise managing detected vulnerabilities.