Communication and collaboration between employees, anywhere, using any device has never been more important. Secure communication is critical for all organizations.  But it has never been more top of mind for U.S. federal, state, and local government agencies.

Cloud collaboration services offer quick and cost-effective onboarding of new services and highly scalable deployment. The U.S. Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) helps government agencies save cost and time in selecting and evaluating secure cloud services.

The Federal Government spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year securing the use of IT systems. -FedRAMP

Last year our Cisco WebEx conferencing service achieved FedRAMP certification. Today we are delighted to announce that the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution for Government (HCS-G) is also FedRAMP-authorized. This authorization represents adherence to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) certifications and process requirements. And it's key to enabling secure collaboration among government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels.

FedRAMP authorization represents the culmination of over 12 months of hard work by the HCS engineering team. The team has worked closely with the FedRAMP Program Management Office to show that the Cisco HCS-G service meets the demanding criteria required by the program, including:

• Implementation of more than 300 baseline security controls, including end-to-end encryption with FIPS 140-2 validated cryptography
• Regular audits by a third-party independent system assessor and monthly reviews of security stature with a sponsoring agency
• Provision of continuous monitoring reports and updates

There's much more, but we didn't stop there either.  We believe that the best collaboration experiences result from a combination of great software and services with great devices. That's why we also applied many of the NIST requirements to our IP phones and the Jabber unified communications client.

With Cisco HCS-G services, U.S. government agencies are retiring legacy telephony and unified communications systems. They are saving on maintenance costs, reducing management overhead, and delivering services to new locations faster.

More important is what the service delivers for government employees. They can extend rich collaboration experiences from their desk environment to their remote and mobile work environments. They can choose the right communication tool for the task at hand, with voice and video calling, messaging, presence, and conferencing all included.

Cisco HCS-G delivers on the promise of innovation with world-class collaboration tools that are changing the business of government. They are helping government employees connect with co-workers, constituents, colleagues, and partners more efficiently. The result is greater clarity, simplified operations, and faster decision making.

In addition, Cisco HCS-G solutions help agencies to deliver against programs such as telework, connected justice, telemedicine, and real-estate reduction.  As a result, agencies can make better use of resources, make them more accessible, and enhance the citizen experience.

The Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution for Government is hosted and managed by Cisco, exclusively for U.S. federal, state, and local Government agencies. It is sold by Cisco HCS partners.
Get started: Visit cisco.com/go/FedRAMP