ESChat announces its over-the-top push-to-talk (PTT) government solution has received FedRAMP authorization, meaning ESChat for Government meets the cybersecurity standards required by federal agencies for cloud-based services
By Donny Jackson, Editor, Urgent Communications
ESChat announced its over-the-top push-to-talk (PTT) government solution has received Federal Risk and Authorization Management Programme (FedRAMP) authorization, meaning ESChat for Government meets the cybersecurity standards required by federal agencies for cloud-based services.
ESChat President and CEO Josh Lober said earning the FedRAMP authorization will allow the company to expand its user base, particularly customers that must meet cybersecurity requirements.
“It clears the path for some existing customers to do a broader expansion, and it clears the path to get some new customers who have not been able to use a cloud-hosted push-to-talk communications solution,” Lober said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “We’re the only PTT solution that has FedRAMP authorization.
“It [FedRAMP authorization] makes onboarding much easier, from a security perspective. It streamlines the process for government entities—by law, a federal agency is not allowed to use a non-FedRAMP cloud-hosted service. So, it takes away that restriction. And it streamlines the process for customers to get the paperwork needed to show they comply with cyber requirements.”
Lober said ESChat officials have been working for more than two years to meet the FedRAMP security standards, under the sponsorship of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
ESChat announced the FedRAMP Authorization for its ESChat for Government solution on Friday, but the company received email notification of the authorization status on Friday, according to Lober. This notification came just days after ESChat completed migrating almost all of it government customers to a new cloud platform that is designed to meet FedRAMP security standards—a process that the company began in June.
“All of our public-safety customers had previously been hosted in our AWS GovCloud platform,” Lober said. “Now, we have migrated all of them to our FedRAMP-authorized AWS GovCloud platform. It’s still AWS GovCloud, just with all of the controls and extra stuff that had to get sprinkled on top and tested for the government.
“The migration was completed on Monday [July 28], and the authorization was awarded today [Friday, Aug.1].”
One exception to the migration story are ESChat customers that want to connect their P25 LMR systems to ESChat’s PTT service via an Inter-RF Subsystem Interface (ISSI)—the technology designed to enable P25 interoperability, Lober said. These customers have expressed concern about the notion of having their network encryption keys in a cloud environment—a position that Lober said is understandable.
As a result, this “small percentage” of ESChat customers have not been migrated yet to the FedRAMP-authorized AWS GovCloud platform. But that is expected to change early next year, when ESChat is expected to make a new FedRAMP ISSI proxy available for these customers to purchase, Lober said.
“The FedRAMP ISSI proxy … will be an appliance—a server—that will sit on the customer’s premise, and the ISSI connection from the radio core to the proxy will all be in the same room,” Lober said. “So, the ISSI connection will start and end in the same room, and that means the encryption keys will end in the room. At that point, the proxy will convert all of the traffic remotely. Instead of converting it in the cloud, it will convert it and deal with it remotely, on site. And everything coming in from the proxy will be FedRAMP-compliant.
“The ISSI connection itself will get into our server at a FedRAMP-compliant endpoint, and the customer’s encryption keys will never leave their premise. Those are the two objectives of the proxy … What comes out of that box will be FedRAMP-compliant, ESChat-encrypted traffic.”
Lober said that this ISSI-related solution should mean that the FedRAMP-authorized ESChat for Government offering can continue to support interoperable communications, but while providing user entities with even more security assurances.
“One of the biggest values of ESChat is its huge network of interagency interoperability,” Lober said. “Whether that is for mutual-aid or tactical use, we have a very expansive network of agencies who communicate with each other, and they have to be in a cloud environment to do that.”
“Everything that touches the ESChat [for Government] bubble has to be FedRAMP.”
