FISMA

Table of Content

Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)

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

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 it 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.

Disclaimer: 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 leakage
	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