FedRAMP Moderate Revision 4 Contingency Planning Benchmark

Contingency Planning (CP) in the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) is vital for ensuring information availability, integrity, and confidentiality during disruptions, particularly at the Moderate impact level. To align with and uphold FedRAMP CP requirements at this level, organizations must consider the following steps and factors:

1. Impact Analysis Conduct a comprehensive analysis to assess risks and impacts on information and systems, with a focus on the chosen cloud service provider.

2. Business Impact Analysis (BIA) Identify critical functions and systems, set recovery time objectives (RTO), and recovery point objectives (RPO).

3. Contingency Planning Policy and Procedures Develop a detailed CP policy that defines roles, responsibilities, incident response procedures, and recovery strategies.

4. Contingency Plan Testing Regularly test contingency plans to evaluate readiness, address shortcomings, and improve effectiveness based on outcomes.

5. Data Backup and Recovery Implement backup processes, conduct regular data backups, ensure secure storage, and test data restoration procedures frequently.

6. Incident Response and Reporting Establish an incident response team, outline protocols for incident detection, analysis, response, and reporting in a timely manner.

7. Training and Awareness Conduct training sessions and awareness campaigns to educate personnel on CP policies, procedures, and their specific roles in ensuring system availability.

8. Compliance Monitoring Periodically assess adherence to FedRAMP Moderate CP requirements through audits, risk assessments, and reviews.

By adhering to these steps and protocols, organizations can achieve compliance with FedRAMP Moderate CP Revision 4, thereby enhancing data protection and demonstrating competence in managing disruptions effectively.