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Reporting Highlights “Cloud First”: To move federal agencies to the cloud, the government created a program known as FedRAMP, whose job was to ensure the security of new technology.
To move federal agencies to the cloud, the government created a program known as FedRAMP, whose job was to ensure the security of new technology. Security Breakdown: ProPublica found that FedRAMP authorized a Microsoft product called GCC High to handle sensitive government data, despite years of concerns about its security.
ProPublica found that FedRAMP authorized a Microsoft product called GCC High to handle sensitive government data, despite years of concerns about its security. Potential Conflict of Interest: The government relies, in part, on third-party firms to vet cloud technology, but those firms are hired and paid by the company being assessed. These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
In late 2024, the federal government’s cybersecurity evaluators rendered a troubling verdict on one of Microsoft’s biggest cloud computing offerings.
The tech giant’s “lack of proper detailed security documentation” left reviewers with a “lack of confidence in assessing the system’s overall security posture,” according to an internal government report reviewed by ProPublica.
Or, as one member of the team put it: “The package is a pile of shit.”
For years, reviewers said, Microsoft had tried and failed to fully explain how it protects sensitive information in the cloud as it hops from server to server across the digital terrain. Given that and other unknowns, government experts couldn’t vouch for the technology’s security.
Such judgments would be damning for any company seeking to sell its wares to the U.S. government, but it should have been particularly devastating for Microsoft. The tech giant’s products had been at the heart of two major cybersecurity attacks against the U.S. in three years. In one, Russian hackers exploited a weakness to steal sensitive data from a number of federal agencies, including the National Nuclear Security Administration. In the other, Chinese hackers infiltrated the email accounts of a Cabinet member and other senior government officials.
The federal government could be further exposed if it couldn’t verify the cybersecurity of Microsoft’s Government Community Cloud High, a suite of cloud-based services intended to safeguard some of the nation’s most sensitive information.
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