A federal program created to protect the government against cyber threats authorized a sprawling Microsoft cloud product, despite the company’s inability to fully explain how it protects sensitive data.
  • “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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • albert_inkman@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7410·
    1 day ago

    The conflict of interest angle here is wild. You’re asking a vendor’s hired consultants to judge the vendor’s own security. That’s not a bug in FedRAMP, it’s the entire architecture.

    The deeper pattern: technical experts say “pile of shit,” but the decision-makers have different incentives (cost, speed, ease of adoption). Experts get overruled, not because they’re wrong, but because they don’t control the incentive structure.

    This happens everywhere. Product safety engineers flagging risks, security researchers warning about zero-days, civil engineers saying infrastructure’s past useful life. The signals exist. The system just doesn’t care.