FedRAMP

The U.S. Federal government established the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), a government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to the security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring of cloud products and services. Congress codified FedRAMP in 2022, as “a Government-wide program that provides a standardized, reusable approach to security assessment and authorization for cloud computing products and services that process unclassified information used by agencies.”

All federal agency cloud deployments and service models, other than certain on-premise private clouds, must meet FedRAMP requirements at the appropriate risk impact level (Low, Moderate, or High).

Customers interested in hosting FedRAMP-authorized services on Google Cloud must use Assured Workloads in order to be compliant within the FedRAMP Moderate or High Impact Level. See below for more info.

Google Cloud’s FedRAMP Compliance

The FedRAMP Board (formerly known as the Joint Authorization Board) is the primary governing body for FedRAMP, and includes the Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the General Services Administration (GSA), and other agencies as determined by the GSA Administrator and the FedRAMP director.

The FedRAMP Board has issued FedRAMP Moderate and FedRAMP High Authority to Operate (ATO) to Google Cloud infrastructure and to specific Google Cloud Services Offerings (CSOs). Google Cloud routinely submits additional services for FedRAMP Moderate and High approvals to the Board.

Google Cloud provides additional FedRAMP compliance evidence directly to customers who have an existing non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with us. Available documentation under NDA includes:

FedRAMP Customer Responsibility Matrix (CRM)
Google Cloud’s System Security Plan (SSP)
Penetration test reports and other documents

Our sales team or your Google Cloud representative can help provide access to this extended documentation. Government customers may also request Google’s FedRAMP package through the FedRAMP Program Management Office using its package request form.

For customers who buy through a Google partner, purchase terms and conditions flow down from our partners.

Google Workspace FedRAMP compliance

Google Workspace complies with various U.S. federal government and global standards for cloud security and privacy. In addition to maintaining a FedRAMP High authorization, Google Workspace is also certified against ISO 27017, 27018, 27001, and is audited against the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Service Organization Control (SOC) standards.

Hosting FedRAMP Moderate and High Workloads on Google Cloud

Google Cloud’s investment in security-by-default for our infrastructure ensures that security controls are built-in and pre-configured to enable customers to achieve various compliance levels without a traditional isolated government cloud architecture.

Customers looking to deploy their solutions using Google Cloud in their FedRAMP Moderate and High environments must use Assured Workloads. Assured Workloads allows customers to confidently secure and configure sensitive workloads to support compliance and security requirements using Google Cloud services. Assured Workloads does not rely on physical infrastructure distinct from its public cloud data centers. Instead, it delivers a Software Defined Community Cloud that offers cost, speed, and innovation advantages.

FedRAMP-authorized services made available through Assured Workloads implement FedRAMP security controls and allow customers to use the capabilities of Google Cloud to meet their organizational needs. Assured Workloads also provides visibility into the compliance state of FedRAMP workloads via Assured Workloads Monitoring. This tool can help you spot and remediate compliance violations, and provide control attestations to auditors of your compliance state.

In addition to the controls satisfied by the Google Cloud infrastructure FedRAMP High ATO, Assured Workloads implements the following key FedRAMP High controls by default for customers handling FedRAMP High government data:

Set guardrails to restrict FedRAMP High customer data location to the U.S.
Restrict technical support staff to FedRAMP-adjudicated personnel located in the U.S.
Enforce use of FIPS-140-2 compliant encryption at rest and in transit
Implement FedRAMP-required personnel access controls for those with routine access to customer data
Restrict developers to using only FedRAMP compliant products and services
Logical segmentation of in-scope compliance boundary to support FedRAMP Moderate and High requirements

Hosting FedRAMP Moderate and High Data on Google Workspace

Google Workspace maintains a FedRAMP High ATO, which customers can leverage to host FedRAMP Moderate and High data. Customers looking to deploy Google Workspace in their FedRAMP Moderate and High environments should enable the FedRAMP-authorized services that meet the respective authorization. Learn how to turn a service on or off for Google Workspace.

Additionally, Google Workspace Business and Enterprise editions have built-in security controls and feature sets that enable customers to meet FedRAMP High and align their own ATO. Google Workspace users can configure their environments to meet FedRAMP data residency controls by using a Data Region policy.

Process for Achieving a FedRAMP Authority to Operate (ATO)

Customers that are interested in hosting government data on Google Cloud may also be interested in pursuing their own Authority to Operate (ATO). Organizations should consider the following milestones for achieving an ATO on Google Cloud:

Determining whether the in-scope data requires FedRAMP Moderate or FedRAMP High
Select Assured Workloads (FedRAMP Moderate is free tier and FedRAMP High requires a premium subscription) for the in-scope Google Cloud services
Decide on your FedRAMP boundary within Google Cloud
Configuring your workloads in accordance with the shared responsibility model, Customer Responsibility Matrix, in-scope Google Cloud services, and FedRAMP guidelines
Undergoing an audit with a third party assessment organization (3PAO)
Submitting your package to the FedRAMP Board or Federal Agency for review and authorization

For more information on the ATO process, please refer to the FedRAMP website. For additional FedRAMP ATO support from Google Cloud, please visit our Google Cloud Consulting page.

FAQs

FedRAMP allows for varying levels of inheritance for cloud service providers (CSPs) using FedRAMP-authorized infrastructure, platforms, and services. This initial analysis of control vs. inheritance will ultimately determine how much compliance responsibility you will hold as a CSP.

For example, if your organization prefers to build the entire stack of your application, you will also create more customer responsibility/obligation during evaluation by your Authorizing Official. If you use Platform as a Service or Software as a Service, there is likely to be a lesser compliance burden.

Once you have selected your FedRAMP-authorized services, Google can help you configure your solution through service-specific configuration guides or direct engagement with FedRAMP experts in our Google Cloud Consulting organization.

Google is one of the first hyperscale commercial cloud providers to achieve FedRAMP High on a commercial public cloud offering, and is one of the largest providers of FedRAMP services available on the market today. In the past, hyperscale providers have separated their “govclouds” from their commercial cloud offerings to meet FedRAMP High requirements. This approach can deliver compliance, but these separate environments often don’t come with all the benefits that Google cloud infrastructure can provide.

Google Cloud’s FedRAMP High authorization enables government agencies processing high impact workloads to adopt technology at a much higher velocity and at the same scale as commercial customers, and leverage Google’s unique public cloud infrastructure, including both its capabilities and its capacity. With Assured Workloads or Assured Controls, customers can confidently secure and configure sensitive workloads to support their compliance and security requirements in the cloud. Choose your security settings, and Google can put the necessary cloud controls in place.

The list of Google Workspace editions that are FedRAMP authorized are listed below. Here is the configuration guide for deploying Google Workspace to support compliance with FedRAMP High security controls.

Yes, Assured Workloads is required to achieve either a FedRAMP Moderate or FedRAMP High ATO. Assured Workloads gives Google Cloud the ability to identify customer federal workloads and apply technical guardrails to match any changes in Federal regulation. Google Cloud has committed to maintaining FedRAMP compliance requirements, including those introduced in NIST 800-53 Revision 5 and any future releases for workloads running within Assured Workloads.

Additionally, Assured Workloads is the only way for Google Cloud to meet FedRAMP High’s heightened support and data residency requirements. Assured Workloads is not applicable for Google Workspace, which has its own controls.

One of the benefits of using Google Cloud for your government workloads is that a number of required controls are already in place in our underlying infrastructure and Assured Workloads. Thus, when you submit your FedRAMP package to the FedRAMP Board for authorization, you will also include Google’s SSP, which outlines controls that Google Cloud manages. Please reach out to your sales team to obtain a copy of Google Cloud’s SSP (requires an NDA).

The StateRAMP (State Risk and Authorization Management Program) group is a nonprofit membership organization that established the StateRAMP certification. Like FedRAMP, it is built upon the NIST 800-53 framework and is modeled in part after FedRAMP. StateRAMP also relies on FedRAMP Authorized 3PAOs to conduct assessments. Google Cloud is ready to support StateRAMP government customers with enhanced data residency and support capabilities via Assured Workloads.

The FedRAMP Marketplace maintains a list of qualified 3PAOs.

Google Cloud’s SSP covers Google-owned resources for penetration testing, and customers may inherit this control by using Google Cloud. A penetration test of the customer’s own FedRAMP environment built using Google Cloud will also need to be conducted during the 3PAO assessment.