FedPlatform.org Focuses on a Government PaaS

“Cash for Clunkers” Should Have Used the Cloud!

By G C Network | August 24, 2009

Rich Bruklis wrote an excellent essy on how the government missed a perfect opportunity to use cloud computing. In “Cloud Opportunity Missed” he writes: “It appears that the voucher system…

US Navy Experiments With Secure Cloud Computing

By G C Network | August 20, 2009

This week in San Diego, CA the US Navy held the initial planning conference for Trident Warrior ’10. The Trident Warrior series is the premier annual FORCEnet Sea Trial Event…

GSA To Present On Cloud Initiative at NCOIC Plenary

By G C Network | August 13, 2009

A General Services Administration (GSA) representative is now scheduled to provide a briefing on the agency’s cloud computing initiative during a “Best Practices for Cloud Initiatives using Storefronts” session on…

FAA CIO Focuses on Cybersecurity

By G C Network | August 12, 2009

During this week Federal Executive Forum, FAA CIO Dave Bowen mentioned protection against software vulnerabilities, wireless intrusion and website vulnerabilities as his top cybersecurity priorities. As the Assistant Administrator for…

DHS Asst. Secretary Addresses Cybersecurity Priorities

By G C Network | August 11, 2009

Greg Schaffer, Assistant Secretary for CyberSecurity & Communications for the US Department of Homeland Security, sees Trusted Internet Connections, EINSTEIN, and front line defense of the nation’s networks as top…

US DoD Chief Security Officer on Cybersecurity Priorities

By G C Network | August 10, 2009

In a Federal Executive Forum interview, Robert Lentz, Chief Security Officer for the US Department of Defense, highlighted the departments cybersecurity priorities. Mr. Lentz is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of…

Twitter Under Denial of Service Attack

By G C Network | August 6, 2009

Multiple sources are reporting that Twitter continues to be under a denial of service attack. Some are speculating that this represents the power of a coordinated bot network attack. For…

NCOIC Holding Full Day Cloud Computing Session

By G C Network | August 5, 2009

The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) will be holding a one-day cloud computing session during its plenary meetings, 21-25 September at the Fair Lakes Hyatt in Fairfax, VA. A…

Sevatec a New Player in the Federal Cloud Computing Market

By G C Network | August 3, 2009

Just in time for the new Federal Cloud Computing Storefront, Sevatec, Inc. is announcing the development of a toolkit to help federal agencies transform their enterprise architectures to cloud computing…

GSA Releases Cloud Computing RFQ

By G C Network | July 31, 2009

Following through on a much anticipated action, GSA released their Cloud Computing Request For Quotation (RFQ) today. Cloud computing is a major part of President Obama’s reform effort and this…

  

With GSA now issuing ATOs and Amazon launching it’s own government specific cloud, IaaS for government agencies is now a reality.  This next step in this “Cloud First” march is a consistent platform on which agencies can securely develop their applications.

To focus on this requirement, FedPlatform.org has been formed as a collaborative initiative to help federal organizations safely learn about and evaluate PaaS technologies. The initiative supports the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy and the Federal CIO’s 25-Point Federal IT Reform Plan, which suggests that cloud technologies provide new efficiencies and substantial cost savings. The FedPlatform.org mission is to facilitate implementations that adhere to rapidly evolving cloud computing standards, with a heavy focus on interoperability, portability and security.

FedPlatform also aims to provide a common security model for federal software systems that leverages the platform.  In doing so, it provides major security advantages over disparate stovepipe security models.
Platforms as a Service incorporate a common role-based access control (RBAC) engine for managing users, workshops, roles, privileges, and memberships. It supports timeouts, strong passwords, password expirations, appropriate encryptions, and RSA tokens. SSL is also available. The hosting can be fully managed on Amazon’s EC2, a GSA IaaS platform or even on an agency’s own infrastructure. They are also making available a collection of tools and resources to help advance organizations from prototyping through production environments on private, community, hybrid or public clouds.
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2 Comments

  1. JP Morgenthal on September 1, 2011 at 9:25 pm

    Seems redundant with the Cloud Security Alliance efforts. Why should anyone pay attention to a vendor-led program like this?



  2. Kevin L. Jackson on September 22, 2011 at 5:41 pm

    I see it as complimentary. CSA support the entire industry where this is focused on the US Federal Government's specific requirements. More like an industry specific CSA.