Compliance infrastructure for federal civilian agencies
Cloud service providers and federal contractors navigate FedRAMP, FISMA, and agency-specific requirements. Thalorin automates the path from initial authorization through continuous monitoring.
Federal civilian agencies operate under the strictest compliance regimes in government. FISMA mandates continuous monitoring. FedRAMP requires third-party assessment. Agency-specific requirements add layers of tailored controls. The authorization boundary never stops expanding.
The average FedRAMP authorization takes 12-18 months and costs $2-4 million. Most of that time goes to documentation—System Security Plans, POA&Ms, evidence artifacts, and continuous monitoring deliverables. The compliance burden compounds with each additional agency customer.
Manual processes don't scale. The Feynman Engine maps your infrastructure to federal requirements, generates assessment-ready documentation, and maintains the evidence trail that keeps authorizations current.
Federal compliance requirements cascade from law to policy to implementation guidance. FISMA mandates security. OMB memoranda set policy. NIST provides the technical framework. FedRAMP standardizes cloud assessment. The Feynman Engine maps these relationships and tracks them as they evolve.
FedRAMP High
Automated421 controls, high-impact systems
FedRAMP Moderate
Automated325 controls, moderate-impact systems
FedRAMP Low
Automated156 controls, low-impact systems
Generate complete System Security Plans, control implementation statements, and required artifacts. The Feynman Engine maps your actual infrastructure to FedRAMP requirements, producing assessment-ready documentation that survives 3PAO scrutiny.
FISMA requires monthly vulnerability scans, quarterly reporting, and annual assessments. Automate data collection from security tools, generate ConMon deliverables, and maintain the evidence trail agencies require for ongoing authorization.
Cloud service providers often maintain authorizations with dozens of agencies. Track unique agency requirements, manage tailored baselines, and coordinate reauthorization timelines across your entire customer base.
Customer Responsibility Matrices define which controls you implement versus inherit from cloud providers. Generate accurate CRMs, track inheritance relationships, and ensure your customers understand their residual responsibilities.
Plan of Action and Milestones track security weaknesses from discovery through remediation. Assign ownership, set realistic timelines, document compensating controls, and demonstrate progress to authorizing officials.
FedRAMP assessments require hundreds of evidence artifacts. Connect to identity systems, cloud platforms, and security tools to collect evidence continuously. When your 3PAO arrives, documentation is waiting.
A SaaS company pursuing FedRAMP Moderate authorization reduced documentation time from 14 months to 6 months. Automated evidence collection eliminated 80% of manual artifact gathering. The 3PAO assessment completed with zero major findings. Agency customers now inherit 270+ controls from the provider's authorization.
Gap analysis against FedRAMP baseline. Identify control deficiencies, document system boundaries, and establish remediation priorities. The Feynman Engine maps your current state to target requirements.
Gap analysis against FedRAMP baseline. Identify control deficiencies, document system boundaries, and establish remediation priorities. The Feynman Engine maps your current state to target requirements.
System Security Plan, policies, procedures, and control implementation statements. Automated generation from infrastructure scans reduces documentation effort by 70% while improving accuracy.
Third-party assessment organization validates control implementation. Evidence artifacts collected continuously ensure assessment readiness. SAR findings addressed through integrated POA&M tracking.
JAB or agency authorizing official reviews assessment package. Authorization decision documented with conditions. ATO letter issued with continuous monitoring requirements defined.
Monthly vulnerability scans, quarterly security assessments, annual reviews. Automated ConMon deliverables maintain authorization status. Significant changes trigger reassessment workflows.
Common questions
What is changing in FedRAMP, and what does it mean for an existing authorization?
The programme is moving to a model built on machine-readable evidence and continuous validation rather than periodic document review. FedRAMP launched its consolidated rules on 25 June 2026, and has published the ends of the current path: no new Rev 5 applications will be accepted after 11 June 2027, with existing Rev 5 authorizations planned to sunset by 31 December 2028. An existing authorization remains valid, but its end date is now known, which makes transition a planning item rather than a future concern.
Is FISMA compliance the same as holding a FedRAMP authorization?
No. FISMA is the statutory obligation on the agency for its information systems; FedRAMP is the mechanism by which a cloud service offering is assessed once and reused across agencies. A service can be FedRAMP authorized and still leave the agency with FISMA obligations for everything above the service boundary — the data placed in it, the identities that reach it, and the way it is integrated. The authorization reduces the agency's work; it does not assume the agency's responsibility.
How do CISA directives interact with our authorization?
They impose obligations on agencies that arrive on their own timelines and do not wait for an authorization cycle. A binding operational directive can require remediation of specific vulnerabilities within a fixed window, or the configuration of a widely used service to a set baseline, and the agency will pass those requirements to the systems and vendors concerned. Treating directives as separate from the authorization programme produces two parallel remediation queues competing for the same engineers.
What does an agency need beyond the vendor's authorization package?
The customer responsibility matrix, honestly completed, and evidence for the controls it assigns to them. Every service authorization leaves a set of controls to the consuming agency — access management, data classification, configuration of the service's own security features, incident coordination — and those are precisely the controls that go unowned when an agency treats authorization as something the vendor holds. The matrix is the artifact that makes the division explicit.
Does a High authorization satisfy an agency that needs Moderate?
Generally yes on control coverage, since the baselines are cumulative, but the authorization is for a defined service boundary and the agency still has to accept the risk for its own use. The more common error runs the other way: assuming the impact level was determined by the vendor. Categorisation follows the agency's data and mission, so an agency placing higher-impact data into a Moderate service has created a gap that the vendor's authorization does not address.
Regulatory state described as of August 2026. Requirements change; verify against the current rule before relying on any date above.
Federal compliance is a prerequisite, not a differentiator
The organizations that automate compliance win contracts. The ones that don't spend years chasing authorization.