The “how-to” deliver speed and security for operational capabilities for cloud production is explained.

Cloud means different things to different people. Cloud is often seen as a “force multiplier,” bringing more functionality and access for businesses and agencies. Cloud has changed the definition of “commercial off the shelf,” says Maria Horton, FedRAMP Program Manager/Director. Cloud vendors will show you how quickly you can set up in the cloud. Challenges for a small agency are challenging, and it is not fundamentally different from a large agency.  The biggest obstacle is how to build so people can do all the functions need to drive capabilities across the board. As you can see, there is much work to do before migrating to the cloud.

Essentially, you are setting up a stand-alone data center using their tools within another’s data center. First, you must decide what will be hosted in the cloud. Then, government agencies will still have to go through the Risk Management Framework (RMF) process to achieve authority to operate (ATO) in the cloud.

In other words, you still must meet STIG and CIS mandates. And if you know anything about that, it doesn’t go quickly. So, you need a plan.

Accelerate risk management and be more proactive.

 The National Institute of Technology and Standards (NIST) established its Risk Management Framework (RMF) to create an integrated, risk-based approach to security, privacy, and supply chain risk. NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-53 is the foundation for hardening systems to mitigate risk when meeting RMF best practices. As a result, the government has a solid plan for hardening compliance.

The challenge here is that hardening is traditionally a cumbersome, soul-sucking, manual process that can take weeks and months to complete. If you have ample human resources, that is. And nobody ever has enough of these highly specialized, expensive experts on hand.

Automation is what makes hardening for the cloud feasible and sustainable. SteelCloud’s patented ConfigOS policy remediation software can help you reduce the time and hassle of meeting RMF best practices. In fact, it has been proven in multiple instances to reduce hardening time by 90% while reducing costs by 70%.

You never have to worry about downtime due to configuration conflicts. ConfigOS provides instant visibility into potential conflicts and prioritizes remediation activities based on control criticality. As a result, ConfigOS helps you maintain your RMF best practices without worrying about the revenue loss that downtime can cause. It also allows you:

• Reduce risk. ConfigOS is a SCAP-validated automation solution that can scan 5,000-10,000 systems per hour and remediate 2,000-4,000 systems per hour. With ConfigOS, you will gain visibility into your risk and set mitigating controls in less than a day.
• Create security baselines and test configurations. ConfigOS Foundry makes it easy to use standardized security baselines or customize STIG and CIS benchmarks so you can take a risk-based approach to cybersecurity. Securely test your configurations before deploying them and leverage our rollback functionality to reduce downtime.
• Provide continuous assurance. Ensure compliance with best practices by automating security configuration updates to ensure continuous control effectiveness. Document all compliance activities within ConfigOS.

Circumvent many of the roadblocks in your way.

 According to Meritalk, state and local government IT decision-makers say they are plagued by budget constraints, security concerns, lack of internal resources and workforce to support modernization, lack of in-house expertise to guide migration, lack of a central coordination unit to streamline transformation efforts, and perceived risk of meddling with critical technology. In other words, manpower/expertise and budget/time are their chief concerns, and therefore, in part, they feel a need to move to the cloud.

Automation helps you navigate these roadblocks and move at cloud speed while achieving security compliance. ConfigOS rapidly performs essential tasks with minimal human intervention:

• Scan. Each instance of ConfigOS can scan 1000s of endpoints per hour, supporting every type of infrastructure, and cloud environment.
• Remediate. Remediate 100s of controls around each server or workstation in minutes. Better yet, execute multiple remediations at once!
• Report. Customize and simplify compliance reporting, filtering results with tools that deliver actionable data format.
• Monitor. Gain near real-time awareness of your compliance posture with a Splunk-based dashview dashboard or the SIEM of your choice.
• Maintain. ConfigOS performs continuous diagnostics and remediation 24/7/365 to ensure your secure baseline doesn’t drift.
• Comply. Achieve rapid ATOs, bringing new tools and capabilities online.

Simplify hardening to speed your way to compliance.

 Understanding how the cloud is different begins with knowing how new security technology leverages the cloud to scale radically. You need to be able to sort through all your data in real-time and accurately narrow it down to a manageable level. Again, automation helps.

In addition, ConfigOS Foundry is a graphical application that allows users to modify, add, delete controls, and, most importantly, build and document waivers.  It eliminates the need for the user to use a scripting language and associated syntax, thereby opening the task up to lower-level specialists.

It also “splits” policies so that the user can exercise all the STIG/CIS controls, determine waivered controls, and build an operational baseline policy. The Foundry policy split capability allows users to harden all the necessary STIG controls around an application stack in about an hour.  ConfigOS Command Center will remediate hundreds of endpoints in  minutes with the work done.

Make short work of your cloud migration with SteelCloud.

Moving to the cloud brings many decisions to the table. It’s a valuable opportunity to rethink the processes and systems you use in an on-premise environment and update them for the cloud.

Replacing legacy systems is perhaps the most significant consideration leaders will make as they move to the cloud. They jeopardize data security as well as the services the systems provide. But the second most critical decision will be “how do I move faster at a time when qualified manpower is hard to find?” And, for that, there’s automation.

You can achieve compliance and ATOs using a kluge of disparate scanners and scripting products, or you can operationalize the entire process with automation that saves you time, budget, effort, and hair-pulling. To learn more about ConfigOS software automation, and preparing for cloud migration, contact SteelCloud today.