Governance, Risk & Compliance
A FedRAMP readiness consultant is worth hiring for one conversation before any others: whether you have a path to authorisation at all. FedRAMP is not a certificate you can buy on your own schedule. It is an authorisation granted for a specific cloud service offering, assessed by an accredited Third Party Assessment Organisation, and it requires an agency sponsor or a route through the FedRAMP programme office. Without that path, control work is a capital project with no completion date.
We are not a 3PAO, and we will not pretend that preparation and independent assessment are the same job. What we do is define the authorisation boundary, implement the NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 controls for your baseline, write a System Security Plan that describes the service as built, and get the evidence into a state where the 3PAO assessment produces findings you already knew about.
The baselines are substantial: Low is around a hundred and fifty-six controls, Moderate around three hundred and twenty-three, and High considerably more, and most of the effort is not in the control text but in continuous monitoring, which begins the day authorisation is granted and never stops. If you already hold SOC 2 or ISO 27001:2022, a meaningful share of the evidence carries across.
Why you need it
01 / 06An agency partner willing to sponsor and issue an Authority to Operate, or a route through the FedRAMP programme office, is a precondition rather than a later step. Beginning control implementation without a credible path is the most expensive mistake available in this programme.
What sits inside the authorisation boundary determines the size of everything: the control set, the assessment, the continuous monitoring burden and the cost of every future change. Leveraging an already-authorised infrastructure provider removes a great deal of it, and is usually the right design.
Monthly vulnerability scanning with defined remediation timelines, POA&M maintenance, annual assessment and significant change requests are permanent operating obligations. Organisations budget for the authorisation and are surprised by the year that follows it.
For US federal business, authorisation is frequently the gate rather than a differentiator, and the authorisation package can be reused by other agencies, which is what makes the investment defensible once the first sponsor is secured.
Instrument
02 / 06NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 against SOC 2 and ISO 27001, so evidence you already produce is not gathered twice.
What we deliver
03 / 06Whether authorisation is realistically achievable for you, at which impact level, by which route, and what a sponsor will expect. An honest no at this stage is the most valuable thing we can give you.
What is inside, what is a leveraged service from an already-authorised provider, what is external, and the data flows and interconnections that justify the line. Drawn to be defended in assessment.
Every control in your baseline assessed against the implementation as it exists, with the customer responsibility matrix made explicit rather than assumed.
The engineering work (FIPS-validated cryptography, boundary protection, identity and access management, audit and accountability, configuration and vulnerability management) done with your teams rather than described to them.
System Security Plan, policies and procedures, incident response plan, configuration management plan, contingency plan and POA&M, written to describe the system as built and maintained as it changes.
Preparation for the 3PAO security assessment, support through it, and the monthly scanning, reporting and POA&M rhythm that has to run from authorisation onwards.
How we run it
04 / 06Impact level, sponsorship route and a realistic view of whether and when authorisation is achievable. This step can and sometimes should end the programme.
Weeks 1-3Define the authorisation boundary and decide what to inherit from an already-authorised platform rather than build and assess yourself.
Weeks 3-6Assess the boundary against every control in the baseline and produce the remediation plan and the customer responsibility matrix.
Months 2-3Close the gaps and write the package alongside the engineering work, so the SSP describes the system that actually exists.
Months 3-9A full internal review against the assessment objectives, then the independent security assessment performed by the accredited 3PAO.
Months 9-12Support the authorisation decision, then stand up monthly scanning, POA&M management and significant change reporting.
Month 12, then monthlyKey benefits
05 / 06Authorisation converts an unreachable segment into a reachable one, and the package can be leveraged by further agencies rather than repeated from the beginning for each.
Boundary definition, hardened baselines, comprehensive audit logging and monthly vulnerability management raise the floor of the whole service, not only the part inside the boundary.
The SP 800-53 control set is a superset of much of what SOC 2 and ISO 27001 ask for, so once this is running the commercial attestations get substantially cheaper.
Tools we use
06 / 06No “latest tech tools”. These are the ones your report will cite, alongside the manual work that a tool cannot do for you.
Standards
Package
Technical validation
Continuous monitoring
Mapping
Why Aphelion
SharedDarshap Nayak, formerly of KPMG, holds a master’s degree in cybersecurity and more than seven years in security operations. Jaimin Somani brings fifteen-plus years of academic and hands-on VAPT. Hemang Desai is an ICT network specialist from Australia. You will meet them, not a logo.
Meet the teamEvery finding arrives with the reproduction steps, the affected asset and the fix, ranked by what it actually reaches in your environment, not by a CVSS number copied from a scanner. You get the report and the raw output, not a summary of a summary.
See how we testAhmedabad and Sharjah, working the same methodology on the same tooling. Indian data-residency requirements and UAE delivery are both ordinary here, and the AphelioNYX AD Pen-Test module runs entirely inside your perimeter when regulation says it must.
The platformInvent a statistic to make a slide land. Publish your name as a client without written permission. Print an award badge nobody awarded. Founded in 2024. We say so, and we attribute experience to the people who have it.
Ask us anythingAcross the globe, and across eight industries. We name a client only with their written permission.
AphelioNYX is SOC 2, ISO and GDPR compliant; attestations are available on request under NDA. We would rather hand you the report than print a badge.
Questions
FAQNext door
RelatedA personalised walkthrough and a free readiness assessment against the frameworks you are actually being asked for. Pick a time that suits you, or write to us. We reply within one business day.