Google’s pursuit of infusing the Google Cloud Platform with the latest security solutions has reached new heights thanks to a recent review and certification from the FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board. The board has rated the platform as aligning with FedRAMP Rev. 4 Provisional Authorization to Operate (P-ATO) at the Moderate Impact level. The significance of that rating is that it implies that Google’s platform, used across its consumer products, is robust enough for use by some United States government customers at a federal, state, and local level. Google hasn’t listed exactly which of its services have obtained the certification but this review is said to extend FedRAMP approval to no fewer than 49 of its GCP products, building on prior authorizations for G Suite and some other solutions from the U.S. General Services Administration. The company also revealed it’s now actively working to ensure that the rest of its services and products will be certified in the near future.
For vendors working with the search giant’s cloud platform, the certification also allows them to more readily obtain FedRAMP certification for their own services and products. That’s because those can inherit IaaS and PaaS controls directly from the Google Cloud Platform, which should reduce costs and other hindrances to FedRAMP authorization of products built on the system. The certification also covers a swath of Google Cloud regions since it includes data centers in multiple countries. Obviously, the primary goal of the authorization is to allow government customers to utilize Google’s increasingly popular suite of productivity-centered offerings with the peace of mind that they are secure. This certification means that the only step left for those customers is to apply for access to the JAB P-ATO package via appropriate channels.
Bearing that in mind, this should also bring some peace of mind to other G Suite customers and users on the platform. Although there’s no such thing as perfect security on any platform, this third-party verification of its efforts indicates Google is taking its commitment to security even more seriously than before. That’s an important stance to take, especially when considering the many concerns consumers and enterprises across the board have recently been raising with regard to privacy and data security in general.