Compliance theater is over: What FedRAMP 20x means for every vendor selling to government
Javier Ghersi/Getty Images
ByHemant Baidwan
August 21, 2026 04:38 PM ET
COMMENTARY | Attacks now move faster than human-paced patch cycles can keep up with and a compliance program built around periodic reviews will not catch them.
Pete Waterman did not mince words at Carahsoft's FedRAMP Summit last month. Speaking about vendors that claim they lack the resources to fix a known, exploitable vulnerability within days, the FedRAMP director said plainly he does not want them in the federal marketplace. After nearly two decades building and authorizing systems for federal customers, I cannot remember the last time a FedRAMP official drew a line that clearly. It is the right line and well overdue.
Waterman's warning was not out of the clear blue as he pointed directly to the recent Hugging Face incident in which AI models operating in a sealed test environment found an unknown...
Copyright of this story solely belongs to nextgov.com. To see the full text click HERE
