Compliance management services for FISMA by SharkStriker

FISMA Compliance

Garner trust with secured information and operations for your federal agency with FISMA

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Understanding FISMA compliance

In 2002, the government of the United States passed the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) as a part of the E-Government Act. It was a part of the Federal Risks and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). As per FISMA, all federal agencies must implement the recommended best practices for information security.

These guidelines were jointly framed by the NIST and FISMA, with NIST maintaining and updating the recommendations and FISMA issuing guidance. These guidelines were jointly framed by the NIST and FISMA, with NIST maintaining and updating the recommendations and FISMA issuing guidance.

What does it cover?

FISMA has specified requirements under these main domains:

Information Security Inventory

FISMA requires organizations in regularly maintaining system inventory for their IT infrastructure. It must include all the processes and systems that store, send, receive, process, and transmit information.

Risk Categorization

It recommends organizations to assess their posture for security risks and categorize and address them with security measures. They must document the whole process with measures to treat all the security risks.

System Security Plan

They must prepare a comprehensive plan that encompasses the security posture management of the organization. It must define all the security measures & controls and specify how they will implement them in a System Security Plan. It must regularly be updated.

Continuous Monitoring

For long-term adherence to the FISMA guidelines, federal agencies are required to implement measures for continuous monitoring of all the FISMA controls. They must perform periodical risk assessments and check for deviations in the implemented measures. Additionally, they must periodically assess all the third-party vendors for risk and ensure that they are implementing all the recommended measures for security.

Security Controls

All the subjected federal agencies must implement the controls for security and integrity, confidentiality, and availability of information systems. They must implement the controls specified in the NIST 800-53 with more than 20 security controls for agencies. Agencies must implement all the controls subjected to the FISMA category they fall under.

Risk Assessment

Any federal agency that has implemented changes in the system must conduct periodical three-tier risk assessments recommended in the NIST SP 800-30 by utilizing the Risk Management Framework. They must further identify and implement the controls needed upon assessment.

Assessment and Authorization

Every agency must conduct a security review and show proof of implementing, maintaining, and monitoring systems for FISMA compliance annually. All the controls are to be assessed and checked whether they are performing optimally and are serving their purpose. Only upon authorization of the assessment by an appointed authority will the systems be allowed to operate. 

Challenges of FISMA Compliance

There are immense business benefits offered by FISMA. However, it is equally essential to consider some common challenges encountered in the compliance journey. The following are some of the business challenges of adhering to FISMA

Challenges

Description

It is highly complex

FISMA compliance demands a certain level of expertise to implement given its complexity. It requires organizations to establish and maintain system inventory, conduct risk assessments, and implement measures for detection and response.

Implementing continuous monitoring measures

Since the threat landscape keeps evolving, it is critical to keep up with the increasing sophistication of threats. It is why FISMA keeps updating its guidelines from time to time. It can become highly challenging for agencies to keep up with the compliance changes. Agencies must implement all the security measures and recommendations on time with the right set of procedures, policies, and controls.

Integrating information systems

FISMA recommends that agencies implement and maintain all the information security measures, as per the information security program, across all the systems and processes. Many agencies struggle executing it due to legacy systems that may face compatibility issues, making it challenging to work in line with the recommendations.

Data classification and handling

FISMA has made it mandatory for all the subjected federal agencies to classify all the information that has undergone creation, receipt, maintenance, processing, and transmission. It can be challenging, especially in a large organization to ensure execution of information classification with consistency across different levels since they have large information assets distributed across varied levels in an organization.

Training and awareness

It is one of the primary aspects of FISMA that emphasizes bridging human awareness gaps when it comes to information security and compliance guidelines and taking measures to raise awareness on security measures that are to be implemented individually. However, organizations face a challenge to maintain awareness because roles and responsibilities are distributed across departments and levels.

Third party compliance

As per the recommendations, agencies must take measures to assess address, and manage risks across their third-party vendors. This can become challenging since they have limited visibility of the cybersecurity posture of vendors.

Reputational risks associated

All federal agencies are required to adhere to all the recommendations of FISMA. Any agency that fails to comply with guidelines may lose federal funding and might lose future business opportunities.

To whom does it apply

FISMA applies to all the federal agencies and private organizations managing federal programs like Medicare insurance for unemployment and Medicaid programs.

The consequences of non-compliance

Losing a contract with the federal government is one of the primary consequences that agencies subjected to FISMA compliance face. The other consequences of being non-compliant with FISMA guidelines include:

Loss of funding from the federal government
Exposure to cybersecurity risks
Loss of reputation because of non-compliance

Benefits of becoming compliant to FISMA

All the FISMA-compliant organizations enjoy some business benefits. These include:

Benefits

Description

Round-the-clock information security

FISMA ensures that agencies implement measures for information security such as continuous monitoring to ensure that their citizens are secured round-the-clock from unauthorized access. It improves trust between agencies and citizens.

Risk management across different levels

It provides detailed guidelines and best practices for securing sensitive information assets that are stored and managed across different departments and levels in an organization, empowering them to manage risks effectively.

Bridges awareness gaps in cybersecurity

Federal agencies are required by FISMA to conduct periodical training and awareness campaigns covering different departments across the organization. It reduces the chances of cyber risks from human error or awareness gaps.

Integrating information systems

Increases data security standards (helps secure citizen data efficiently)

It provides a systematic way through which organizations can keep their citizens’ data more efficiently. It improves the security standards of agencies, assisting them to ensure the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of the information with enhanced predictability and resilience against modern-day threats.

Empowers agencies with periodical assessment and monitoring

FISMA encourages periodical security assessment and monitoring of all the security controls implemented, ensuring regular assessment of security posture, and addressing all the underlying risks with the best practices recommended in the guidelines.

Provides guidance for incident response

It provides agencies with a detailed set of guidelines that are to be followed for incident response, ensuring proactive security of all sensitive information assets and empowering organizations with increased preparedness with remediation and recovery during cyber attacks.

Assists in complying with other global standards

FISMA shares a lot of best practices with global compliance standards for information security and cybersecurity in general. Therefore, by adhering to FISMA, organizations also improve their chances of becoming compliant with global regulations like GDPR.

How SharkStriker helps becoming FISMA compliant?

Compliance guidelines are constantly subject to change as the threats keep evolving their techniques and keeping up with these guidelines can be a challenge, especially without the right people, processes, and solutions.

SharkStriker solves this by offering a dedicated team of experts who assist organizations in both cybersecurity and compliance from the beginning to the end of their compliance journey. The following is SharkStriker’s approach to compliance:

1. Risk Assessment
2. Gap assessment
3. Risk treatment plan
4. Implementation
5. Post implementation
6. Training and awareness

01

Risk Assessment

In the first step, our team prepares a detailed scope of the compliance process. Once the scope is defined, they conduct a VAPT across the IT infrastructure to identify and categorize all the existing risks as per their severity. We prepare a detailed report comprising of all the recommendations to treat the risks.
02

Gap assessment

We assess the current security measures against the FISMA guidelines, identifying the gaps in compliance, and the areas that are to be addressed.
03

Risk Treatment plan

We prepare a detailed plan comprising the controls, rules, policies, procedures, technology, resources, and expertise to be implemented for treating risks across the posture.
04

Implementation

We implement the risk treatment plan with the right set of expertise, processes, and technology. We ensure that all the aspects of the plan are covered.
05

Post implementation audit

We conduct an assessment, looking for gaps in implementation. Upon discovery, we address the discovered gaps with the right set of measures.
06

Training and awareness

Awareness is the most critical aspect of compliance. Therefore, we conduct a detailed assessment across different levels of the organization to identify the gaps in compliance. We prepare a training module that addresses all the gaps in awareness to effectively bridge awareness gaps reducing any possibility of human error in compliance.