Practitioner-depth analysis across federal and private compliance: FISMA and NIST RMF, FedRAMP, CMMC, federal AI governance, SOC 2, AI governance, cybersecurity, and GRC engineering. Written by a CPA, CISSP, CISA with Big 4 audit experience.
How many of your agency's AI systems qualify for high-impact AI classification under OMB M-25-21? Not the number you reported in last year's use case inventory under M-24-10. The number that actually qualifies today, under...
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The conventional take on Office of Management and Budget (OMB) M-25-21 is that the Trump administration ripped out the Biden-era guardrails and told agencies to move fast. That reading is wrong, and acting on it...
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The email arrives on a Tuesday. Your contracting officer has forwarded a notice: the new contract includes Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) 252.204-7021, and the performance period begins in four months. You need Cybersecurity...
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The email arrived on a Tuesday afternoon. A federal contracting opportunity worth $340,000, perfect fit for the work the business had been doing for three years. The owner spent a weekend drafting the proposal, assembled...
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The notification arrived on a Tuesday. A Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) auditor was on-site, reviewing overhead pool charges for the prior fiscal year. By Wednesday afternoon, the auditor had flagged $47,000 in entertainment expenses...
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Federal compliance documentation practice has not changed materially in twenty years: security professionals write System Security Plans (SSPs) by hand, auditors read them by eye, and agencies process authorization packages the same way they processed...
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What is your Supplier Performance Risk System (SPRS) score right now? Not the score you submitted. The score that reflects your actual implementation status today, measured against the 110 controls in NIST SP 800-171 Rev...
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The following is an illustrative composite drawn from current CMMC assessment market conditions. Contractor A had 340 workstations, four office locations, a shared IT environment spanning HR, finance, and engineering, and a standard enterprise network...
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FedRAMP has been running essentially the same authorization process for fifteen years. Cloud service providers submit narrative security packages, assessors review documentation, the Program Management Office (PMO) validates controls, and an agency issues an Authorization...
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In 2025, FedRAMP processed more than 100 Rev5 authorizations without a single Open Security Controls Assessment Language (OSCAL) submission, a figure RFC-0024 itself cites in its background section to justify the machine-readable mandate (FedRAMP RFC-0024,...
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Most small contractors fail Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) audits before the auditor walks through the door. The accounting system was never designed for government contracting. Time gets recorded in lump sums at the end...
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Every federal agency that failed an authorization review in the past three years has something in common. The finding is rarely about a missing firewall rule or an unpatched server. The finding is about a...
Read the GuideOne compliance analysis per week from Josef Kamara, CPA, CISSP, CISA. Federal and private compliance, written for practitioners.