Risk Management Framework
The Risk Management Framework (RMF) is a United States federal government guideline, standard and process for risk management to help secure information systems (computers and networks) developed by National Institute of Standards and Technology. The Risk Management Framework (RMF), illustrated in the diagram to the right, provides a disciplined and structured process that integrates information security, privacy and risk management activities into the system development life cycle. Overview. The main document that describes the details of RMF is NIST Special Publication 800-37, "Risk Management Framework for Information Systems and Organizations: A System Life Cycle Approach for  Security and Privacy". This is the second revision of this document and supersedes the first revision "Guide for Applying the Risk Management Framework to Federal Information Systems". The various steps of the RMF link to several other NIST standards and guidelines, including NIST Special Publication 800-53, "Security and Privacy Controls for Information Systems and Organizations". The RMF steps include: History. The E-Government Act of 2002 (Public Law 107-347) entitled FISMA 2002 (Federal Information Security Management Act) was a law passed in 2002 to protect the economic and national security interests of the United States related to information  security. Congress later passed FISMA 2014 (Federal Information Security Modernization Act) to provide improvements over FISMA 2002 by: FISMA required the protecting information and information systems from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction in order to provide Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. Title III of FISMA 2002 tasked NIST with responsibilities for standards and guidelines, including the development of: NIST 800-37 (Risk Management Framework or RMF) was developed to help organizations manage security and privacy risk, and to satisfy the requirements in the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 (FISMA), the Privacy Act of 1974, OMB policies , and Federal Information Processing Standards, among other laws, regulations, and policies. Risks. During its lifecycle, an information system will encounter many types of risk that affect the overall security posture of the system and the security controls that must be implemented. The RMF process supports early detection and resolution of risks. Risk can be categorized at high level as infrastructure risks, project risks, application risks, information asset risks, business continuity risks, outsourcing risks, external risks and strategic risks. Infrastructure risks focus on the reliability of computers and networking equipment. Project risks focus on budget, timeline and system quality. Application risks  focus on performance and overall system capacity. Information asset risks focus on the damage, loss or disclosure to an unauthorized part of information assets. Business continuity risks focus on maintaining a reliable system with maximum up-time. Outsourcing risks focus on the impact of 3rd party supplier meeting their requirements. External risks are items outside the information system control that impact the security of the system. Strategic risks focuses on the need of information system functions to align with the business strategy that the system supports. Revision 2 updates. The major objectives for the update to revision 2 included the  following: Revision 2 also added a new "Prepare" step in position zero to achieve more effective, efficient, and cost-effective security and privacy risk management processes.