FISMA basics: What federal agencies and contractors need to know

FISMA defininition: What does FISMA stand for?

FISMA, or the Federal Information Security Management Act, is a U.S. federal law passed in 2002 that seeks to establish guidelines and cybersecurity standards for government tech infrastructure, and in so doing protect government information and operations. The law was modified in 2014 to put more emphasis on continual monitoring with the passage of the similarly named Federal Information Security Modernization Act; generally, discussions of FISMA refer to the set of regulations established by both these laws.

Like most federal cybersecurity laws, FISMA constitutes a complex set of rules that are intended to be at least somewhat flexible. While the initial intention of the law was to establish standards that the IT departments for federal agencies would follow, the sprawling nature of the government and its tight interconnection with private contractors means that the FISMA umbrella covers many, many organizations—including, maybe, yours.

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