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Federal Cyber Experts Thought Microsoft’s Cloud Was “a Pile of Shit.” They Approved It Anyway. (www.propublica.org)
submitted 3 weeks ago by Beep@lemmus.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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  • “Cloud First”: To move federal agencies to the cloud, the government created a program known as FedRAMP, whose job was to ensure the security of new technology.
  • Security Breakdown: ProPublica found that FedRAMP authorized a Microsoft product called GCC High to handle sensitive government data, despite years of concerns about its security.
  • Potential Conflict of Interest: The government relies, in part, on third-party firms to vet cloud technology, but those firms are hired and paid by the company being assessed.
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[-] albert_inkman@lemmy.world 66 points 3 weeks ago

The conflict of interest angle here is wild. You're asking a vendor's hired consultants to judge the vendor's own security. That's not a bug in FedRAMP, it's the entire architecture.

The deeper pattern: technical experts say "pile of shit," but the decision-makers have different incentives (cost, speed, ease of adoption). Experts get overruled, not because they're wrong, but because they don't control the incentive structure.

This happens everywhere. Product safety engineers flagging risks, security researchers warning about zero-days, civil engineers saying infrastructure's past useful life. The signals exist. The system just doesn't care.

[-] chirospasm@lemmy.ml 13 points 3 weeks ago

Are you a bot?

[-] Vlyn@lemmy.zip 9 points 3 weeks ago

Ignore the downvotes, that account is 100% a bot. Every single reply looks generated, plenty even have em-dashes.

this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2026
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