Microsoft and Google: Who's the most FISMA-compliant of them all?
Summary: There's one thing that seems to be lost in the latest debate between Microsoft and Google, which erupted on April 11 over FISMA-certification of their cloud-hosted app offerings. Neither company has yet achieved FISMA certification status for the federal versions of their wares.
There's one thing that seems to be lost in the latest debate between Microsoft and Google, which erupted on April 11 over FISMA-certification of their cloud-hosted app offerings. Neither company has yet achieved FISMA certification status for the federal versions of their wares.
Google officials said last year that its Google Apps offering was FISMA-certified and highlighted that as a distinction separating it from Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). It turns out that Google Apps for Government is not FISMA-certified, even though Google Apps Premier is, as just-unsealed documents made public by the Department of Justice have revealed.
Microsoft also still has not achieved FISMA certification for BPOS. Last summer when I asked, I was told BPOS-Federal would get the FISMA nod "very soon." When I asked again today when it would achieve that state, I was told "imminently."
Is this more than yet another war of words between the two adversaries?
FISMA, the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) specifies a “comprehensive framework to protect government information, operations and assets against natural or manmade threats.” Many federal agenciesstipulate FISMA certification as a requirement for their IT solutions. FISMA certification and accreditation is confirmed by the General Services Administration — which just so happened to be deciding upon a new e-mail system last summer.
Google called out Google Apps for Government at that time as "the first suite of cloud computing applications to receive Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification and accreditation from the U.S. government."
It turns out that Google Apps Premier -- not the federally-focused Apps for Government -- got the FISMA nod. Google is not seeking separate FISMA authorization for Google Apps for Government, however, because the Government and Premier products are almost identical, officials said. Google is simply "updating the existing authorization," a Google spokesperson said. When will that happen? "Imminently."
Hmm. Haven't I heard that somewhere before?
Bottom line: Neither Google nor Microsoft can yet claim the FISMA crown for their federal cloud solutions -- in spite of Google's claims to the contrary last year.
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Talkback
Not to defend the horendous history of insecurity of MS ... but
Google Apps have never being FISMA certified. So MS is correct at pointing out that Google reps are lying their rear ends off when claiming that they are.
On top of that Google Apps aren't even good enough to call beta, much less good enough for production usage. The "suite" (if you can call it that) is buggy, slow, crappy and above all highly insecure.
Some people who just look at basic text documents may find Google Apps useful. But for people in the "real world", Google Apps aren't even close to be useful. In fact, Google Apps haven't even reached the the level of usability that OpenOffice,org had before it was released as v1.0 .... and that is saying a lot.
Rubbish
Yes it was, in July 2010. Here from the DOI brief Microsoft is quoting selectively:
"DOI also considered the impact of the FISMA certification for Google Apps and determined that, by itself, this fact did not indicate that Google Apps satisfies DOI?s enhanced security requirements.?
So DOI claims that the FISMA certification of Google Apps isn't sufficient to qualify for DOIs security standard.
"On top of that Google Apps aren't even good enough to call beta, much less good enough for production usage."
First they ignore you then they attack you then you win.
In the real world, MS is so sh*t scared of them, we have to read endless BS stories like this one, false claims of copyright infringement for include headers, now a claim that their FISMA is invalid, even though the apps are the same apps.
It tells me that Microsoft have NO TECHNICAL ADVANTAGE, because if they did, they'd be pushing that instead of these lawyer tricks.
They're competing against Microsoft BPOS-Federal which is Microsoft online suite.... which isn't certified, doesn't have the volume of existing users and wasn't price competitive. Yet was chosen in some dodgy no bid process that Google is now challenging in court.
Good luck to Google with that, and the sooner Microsoft sacks Balmer and gets a proper engineer in there to run the show, the sooner they'll be back to competing on the products they sell.
Interesting reply.
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Google Apps are FISMA. Google Apps for Government are not.
Two different products. Two different certifications.
This is yet another example where Google hires very intelligent engineers but misses the big picture on many things and is very immature in their decision making processes.
From a quality stand point, Google Apps are good for a school project but fall apart quickly on large complex documents sets.
I think Google Apps have their place.
My daughter has been using OpenOffice for 4 years of HS and College. She does not have access to MS Office and everything has been smooth as silk. She uses an inexpensive Acer notebook with Linux Mint.<br><br>I have no problems with Google, I've been using Gmail since 2/2005 with over 55,000 archived emails. (54%). Also, Google calendar is extremely powerful.
RE: Microsoft and Google: Who's the most FISMA-compliant of them all?
RE: Microsoft and Google: Who's the most FISMA-compliant of them all?
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