Every control you inherit from SecureWatch's FedRAMP High authorization is one fewer control your team must independently implement, document, and assess. Our Customer Responsibility Matrix maps exactly what you inherit — and our AI keeps proving it in real time.
When you deploy on a FedRAMP-authorized platform, you don't start from zero. The cloud service provider has already implemented and had assessed a large subset of the NIST 800-53 controls required for your authorization.
A Customer Responsibility Matrix (CRM) is the formal document that maps each of the 421 FedRAMP High controls into one of three categories: controls SecureWatch handles entirely, controls where responsibility is shared, and controls that remain yours.
For your ATO team, this is the single most impactful document in the authorization process. Every fully inherited control is one your 3PAO does not need to independently assess — compressing your authorization timeline by months and reducing assessment costs by tens of thousands of dollars.
Most competing SIEM platforms hold only FedRAMP Moderate authorizations. Inheriting from a High baseline means you receive coverage across more control families, at greater depth, than Moderate-authorized alternatives can provide.
SecureWatch implements, operates, and maintains the control entirely. Your ATO package references our authorization — no independent implementation required. Examples: infrastructure encryption, audit log immutability, vulnerability scanning of platform components.
SecureWatch provides the capability; you configure it for your environment. Examples: access control policies (we provide five-role RBAC — you assign roles to your staff), incident response (we provide alerting and playbooks — you staff the response team).
Controls that fall outside the platform boundary. Examples: physical security of your on-premises endpoints, your organization's security awareness training, personnel screening for your staff.
SecureWatch implements controls across all major NIST 800-53 Rev 5 families. The table below highlights key controls and their platform-level implementations — the full CRM details all 421 controls.
| Control Family | Key Controls | SecureWatch Implementation |
|---|---|---|
| AC — Access Control | AC-2, AC-3, AC-17 | Cognito + login.gov or federated IdP; IAM least-privilege; five-role RBAC; mandatory MFA; per-tenant token scoping via STS |
| AU — Audit & Accountability | AU-2, AU-3, AU-9, AU-12 | CloudTrail (all API events), AI provenance engine, WORM-compliant audit log, immutable DynamoDB trail available for 3PAO review |
| CA — Assessment & Authorization | CA-2, CA-7 | Automated KSI/OSCAL pipeline; continuous ConMon with real-time drift detection; annual 3PAO assessment |
| CM — Configuration Management | CM-2, CM-6, CM-7, CM-8 | Terraform IaC (no manual production changes); DISA STIG automation; Bottlerocket immutable OS nodes; Inspector asset inventory |
| IA — Identification & Authentication | IA-2, IA-5 | Login.gov (IAL2/AAL2) or SAML/OIDC federation; PIV/CAC support; per-tenant certificate authority; FIPS-validated credential storage |
| IR — Incident Response | IR-4, IR-5, IR-6 | Automated alert routing; GuardDuty threat intel integration; version-controlled response playbooks; 1-hour notification SLA |
| SA — System Acquisition | SA-10, SA-11 | CI/CD security gates; SBOM generation; SAST/DAST/SCA pipeline; digitally signed build artifacts |
| SC — System & Comms Protection | SC-8, SC-12, SC-13, SC-28 | mTLS everywhere; FIPS 140-2 Level 3 TLS (CloudHSM); per-tenant KMS CMKs; PrivateLink endpoints; zero internet egress |
| SI — System & Information Integrity | SI-2, SI-3, SI-7 | Automated patch pipeline; Inspector vulnerability scanning; Wazuh FIM with SHA-256 baselines; sub-second change detection |
SecureWatch's FedRAMP High baseline maps to the most demanding federal compliance frameworks, providing inheritable controls and automated evidence collection across each.
Full implementation of 421 High baseline controls with continuous monitoring and automated evidence generation across all control families.
Complete continuous monitoring and annual assessment pipeline. Automated ConMon reporting aligned to OMB requirements.
Direct NIST 800-171 mapping with automated evidence collection. Purpose-built for the 300,000+ defense contractors now requiring CMMC compliance.
Adequate security controls for Covered Defense Information. Full audit trail and incident notification capabilities meeting contractor obligations.
Reciprocity documentation for streamlined DoD ATO. AWS GovCloud deployment meets Impact Level 4 and 5 data handling requirements.
Real-time OSCAL artifact generation and KSI monitoring — purpose-built for GSA's transition to machine-readable continuous authorization.
FedRAMP continuous monitoring (ConMon) traditionally requires monthly documentation updates, quarterly control assessments, and evidence gathering that consumes significant compliance staff time. GSA's FedRAMP 20x initiative transitions to machine-readable Key Security Indicators (KSIs) and OSCAL artifacts — but most platforms lack the ability to generate these automatically. Compliance teams spend weeks compiling evidence that was available in real time but trapped in dashboards nobody exports.
SecureWatch's Automated KSI/OSCAL Reporting pipeline translates live platform telemetry directly into machine-readable FedRAMP 20x authorization artifacts. This is not a reporting feature — it is a continuous authorization engine that proves your inherited controls are operational, in real time, without human intervention.
The pipeline runs continuously across your tenant's security telemetry. Every Wazuh alert, every FIM event, every vulnerability scan result, every access control decision is evaluated against NIST 800-53 Rev 5 control families and mapped to the corresponding FedRAMP 20x KSIs. When the evidence confirms a control is working, the system generates a signed artifact proving it. When the evidence goes silent or contradictory, the system fires a drift alert before your PMO review window.
No incumbent SIEM platform generates real-time OSCAL artifacts for continuous authorization. As FedRAMP 20x adoption accelerates — projected 40% marketplace share by 2028, 75% by 2031 — this capability becomes a gating requirement, not a differentiator.
Every incoming telemetry event is evaluated against a real-time mapping of Wazuh detection rules to NIST 800-53 Rev 5 control families and FedRAMP 20x Key Security Indicators. The mapping is maintained as a versioned configuration — when NIST or GSA update control definitions, the mapping updates without code changes.
When telemetry confirms a control's operational status, the corresponding KSI status is updated within 15 minutes. The evaluation is evidence-based: a control isn't marked "satisfied" because it was configured — it's marked satisfied because the platform observed it working. FIM events prove SI-7 is operational. Successful MFA challenges prove IA-2. Encrypted transport confirmations prove SC-8.
For each satisfied KSI, the AI generates a timestamped, structured OSCAL JSON component definition referencing the specific telemetry evidence that confirmed the control's status. The artifact follows the NIST OSCAL specification precisely — it is not a summary or a report, but a machine-readable authorization document that the FedRAMP PMO's automated review pipeline can ingest directly.
Each OSCAL artifact is digitally signed using AWS CloudHSM with FIPS 140-2 Level 3 validated RSA-PSS-SHA-256 algorithms. The signature provides cryptographic non-repudiation: the PMO can verify that the artifact was generated by the SecureWatch platform at the stated time and has not been modified since generation. This is the chain-of-custody guarantee that makes machine-readable authorization trustworthy.
Signed artifacts are delivered to your agency's GRC pipeline automatically. SecureWatch supports three delivery targets out of the box, configurable per tenant. Your compliance team doesn't export, download, or manually submit anything — the artifacts flow from telemetry to PMO without human intervention.
If a previously satisfied control's supporting telemetry goes silent or turns contradictory, a drift detection alert fires within 15 minutes — enabling corrective action before the next PMO review window. This is the inverse of the generation pipeline: instead of proving a control works, it proves when a control has stopped working.
Most competing SIEM platforms — Splunk, CrowdStrike, Elastic — hold only FedRAMP Moderate authorizations. That limits what you can inherit.
FedRAMP High implements 421 NIST 800-53 Rev 5 controls — significantly more than the ~325 required for Moderate. Every additional control you inherit is one you don't independently assess.
The cost of High over Moderate is approximately 1.4× because many High controls are enhancements to existing Moderate controls — not entirely new families. The "Moderate-then-upgrade" path costs nearly as much while delaying access to the most valuable market.
FedRAMP High authorization is required for DoD systems and high-impact civilian environments. If you're pursuing DoD ATO or handling high-impact data, inheriting from a Moderate CSP doesn't cover your requirements.
SecureWatch and Microsoft Sentinel are the only SIEM platforms in this competitive set with FedRAMP High authorization. The difference: our AI is included, not an add-on.
The complete CRM and FedRAMP High control inheritance documentation package is available for organizations building their own authorization packages.