FISMA
Summary
Regulation: Federal Information Security Management Act
Abbreviation: FISMA
Governs these parties: US federal agencies that provide services or receive grant money
Enforced by: the Department of Homeland Security
Details
FISMA aims to reduce the potential risk of unauthorized data use, and to develop, document, and implement an information security and protection program disclosure. The governed federal agencies need to comply with the information security standards guidelines, and mandatory required standards developed by NIST.
The rest of this document is designed to help our community understand FISMA better by outlining the following information.
How this regulation relates to cybersecurity
In order to comply with FISMA, federal agencies need to provide information security protections commensurate with the risk and magnitude of the harm resulting from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction of and maintain an information system inventory, categorize information systems, maintain a system security plan, utilize security controls, conduct risk assessments, control certification, and accreditation and ensure continuous monitoring.
How Coro handles compliance for you
At Coro, we've done the research thoroughly and regularly track updates to the regulation in order to ensure that you are implementing best practices in the areas we cover when we're protecting your systems.
The following table outlines the requirements described by FISMA that Coro implements in conjunction with Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.
This table does not guarantee that your organization is compliant with these regulations. As a best practice, seek assistance from a certified auditor when completing your analysis.
| Category | Requirement | How Coro does it |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud Security & Privacy | Malware and ransomware injection | Detects and remediates malware and ransomware files in cloud drives |
| Cloud app account takeover | Monitors access to cloud apps and user/admin activities on them | |
| Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) | Enforces multi-factor authentication on cloud app access | |
| Data governance over cloud drives | Data loss prevention (DLP) for regulatory and business-sensitive data | |
| Data encryption | Safeguards stored sensitive information against unauthorized use and information leaks | |
| Audit and activity logs | Archives all system activities for a period of seven years, supporting referencing and auditing | |
| Email Security & Privacy | Generic and spear phishing | Detects and remediates social engineering attacks based on email content analysis |
| Identity spoofing | Detects and remediates social engineering attacks based on adaptive identity monitoring | |
| Malware and ransomware injection | Detects and remediates malware and ransomware in email attachments | |
| Embedded links to malicious URLs | Detects and remediates embedded links to malicious servers | |
| Email account takeover | Detects and remediates email attacks from within the organization | |
| DLP over outgoing/incoming email | Encrypts emails before they are sent, which are then decrypted by their recipients at the other end. | |
| Encryption of email during transmission | Encrypts email during transit between the sender and the recipient | |
| Business email compromise (BEC) | Scans business email, detects and protects against social engineering attacks | |
| Audit and activity logs | Archives all system activities for a period of seven years, supporting referencing and auditing | |
| Endpoint Security & Privacy | Antivirus (AV) | Detects and remediates files with high-risk content based on their signatures |
| ATP (NGAV) | Detects and remediates processes exhibiting high-risk behaviors with behavioral analysis | |
| Device security posture | Detects security vulnerabilities on endpoint devices and enforces device security posture | |
| Data recovery | Stores local snapshots of data | |
| EDR | Enables post-breach analysis of endpoint activities across the organization | |
| DLP on endpoint devices | Provides data loss prevention (DLP) for business-sensitive data and data defined as sensitive by regulations | |
| Audit and activity logs | Archives all system activities for a period of seven years, supporting referencing and auditing | |
| Data Governance | Data distribution governance and role management | Provides data loss prevention (DLP) for data defined as sensitive by regulations |
| Security and business-specific data monitoring | Monitors for sensitive data according to business and security best practices, including passwords, certificates, source code, proprietary data, etc. | |
| Audit and activity logs | Archives all system activities for a period of seven years, supporting referencing and auditing |