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stackArmor is a Washington DC-based cloud consulting services provider that recognizes the unique security and compliance challenges faced by government and public sector organizations. “We help government agencies ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of digital assets by applying well-established security standards like NIST Special Publication 800-53, to commercial cloud platforms,” said Gaurav “GP” Pal, CEO and Founder of stackArmor. “We draw on our years of government security and compliance experience with FISMA and DIACAP to ensure that government CIO’s are confidently able to adopt cloud computing services to meet their mission requirements.”
stackArmor’s security, compliance and automation engineers have encapsulated their decades of experience in supporting government clients into a pre-packaged cloud security solution called stackArmor ThreatAlertTM. stackArmor ThreatAlertTM provides a full suite of security and compliance service designed to satisfy specific security standards including NIST Special Publication 800-171, FedRAMP, FISMA, and MARS-E 2.0 amongst other standards. The solution has been successfully used by US federal agencies, state government organizations and public sector focused solution providers to meet their cloud security and compliance requirements. stackArmor ThreatAlertTM is a fully Managed DevSecOps solution that provides pre-integrated security vulnerability monitoring and remediation support covering users, applications, data, cloud configurations, containers, and code. The security stack is hosted “in-boundary” ensuring that all security and compliance software and data is running within the government agency’s cloud account as opposed to being transferred to a third-party entity. The Managed DevSecOps pipeline helps address some of the top concerns of government CIO’s—lack of end to end security and lack of trained cybersecurity professionals. stackArmor ThreatAlertTM provides an integrated service that includes tools, reports as well as cybersecurity and cloud subject matter experts performing the actual monitoring and remediation support.
stackArmor draws on its rich experience working with the NIST cybersecurity standards and supporting federal government and defense department customers for securing their systems on the cloud platforms
As an advanced AWS partner, stackArmor is 1 of 10 launch partners for Amazon’s Security Competency and has successfully migrated and managed complex systems on AWS for customers like Department of Defense, US government agencies and public sector organizations. “stackArmor has successfully met rigorous program requirements that are part of the Amazon Partner Network and the Security competency and our selection as a Security competency launch partner speaks to the maturity of methodology, the expertise of our engineers and happy customers,” Pal adds. “I am excited by the work the stackArmor team is doing in the area of cloud security, compliance, and automation, meeting the needs of government CIO’s. We are building on our collective experience since migrating Recovery.gov to AWS in 2010 and innovating by reducing the cost and complexity associated with cloud security and compliance using stackArmor ThreatAlertTM.”
As DevOps adoption continues to grow manifold, stackArmor provides a special DevSecOps engineering internship program for students from different disciplines. As they are able to grow and adapt to stackArmor’s solutions, the company provides full-time opportunities for young minds to join the team.
Currently, stackArmor is bullish about the prospects of their ThreatAlertTM solution, and looks forward to enhancing its capabilities for bettering customer cloud security. The company also plans to unlock market opportunities for advanced security solutions and expand its services into artificial intelligence (AI) and internet of things (IoT) security arena. “Technologies including Container and Kubernetes-based security monitoring are also a part of our upcoming plans,” he concludes.
Company
stackArmor
Management
Gaurav Pal, Founder & CEO
Description
Provider of managed security and services to compliance focused customers including US government, healthcare, and financial services
A well-managed cloud framework developed by stackArmor to provide the best practices for the organizations.
FREMONT, CA: stackArmor, a Washington DC-based cloud consulting service provider, has developed the Well-Managed Cloud Framework based on over ten years of cloud operations experience. The firm renowned for identifying the unique security and compliance tactics for government and private sectors had its current cloud frameworks focused on migrations, landing zones establishment, and optimized hosting models provision. stackArmor’s Well-Managed Cloud framework is leveraged from the best practices from Amazon’s Well-Architected Framework, Microsoft’s Cloud Operating Model, Google’s Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), NIST, and ITIL publications. The stackArmor Well-Managed Cloud framework offers the cloud operators a significant point of view and incorporates best practices, which are built on real operational experience.
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AI is so much more than a buzz term these days. It is a full blown technological revolution commanding the attention of industries and sectors across the board. Its surging role is particularly evident in the public sector where government and federal agencies are flocking to capture the benefits of the emerging tech. Take the Department of State for example. In order to automate the time-consuming task of documentation processing and declassification, the department has instituted an AI-driven pilot project that helps to streamline reviews.
AI Initiatives from The White House and Public Sector
But as AI gains traction, there is also a rush to get ahead of its challenges. In a talk hosted by the Information Technology Industry Council, Arati Prabhakar, the director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, discussed an expected executive order that focuses on balancing opportunity with risk. Of course, that became a reality at the end of October when President Biden signed such an executive order, officially introducing “the most aggressive step by the government to rein in the technology to date,” as described by Rebecca Heilweil at FedScoop.
In addition to addressing concerns with AI, the order outlines approaches to federal agency adoption of the tech, including contracting and hiring as well as other responsibilities. For instance, it has tasked the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with further developing methods of evaluation for AI systems. This has since spurred the NIST to launch a consortium to help achieve this mission, which it has called on organizations to join. In a recently published press release, NIST explained that the consortium will serve as “a core element of the new NIST-led U.S. AI Safety Institute” and reflect its tactic to “rely heavily on engagement with industry and relevant stakeholders.”
This all follows suit with and seeks to build on pursuits that have unfolded elsewhere. Not long before the executive order, the National Security Agency created the AI Security Center to help guide AI use in national security systems. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security put forth their own policies to steer AI use in law enforcement practices.
stackArmor’s ATO for AI™
It’s clear that rates of adoption aren’t slowing down anytime soon. “The pace at which AI is embedded in commercial applications is breathtaking, and we think it’s just a matter of time where the same will apply to Federal and public sector workloads,” Gaurav “GP” Pal, founder and CEO at stackArmor, told MeriTalk. The expanding presence of regulation and compliance is only going to keep riding those coattails. So, to ensure that public sector and government organizations can get a handle on the perks of AI while navigating current and future frameworks, stackArmor has released its Approval To Operate (ATO) for AI™ accelerator. It adds onto the services that the company already provides to meet FedRAMP requirements by offering a competitive edge that pays close attention to the evolving AI inclusion and regulatory environment. “You can enhance and extend what we currently do and incorporate additional security and governance requirements for AI within the existing practices to get out of the gate faster,” explained GP.