FedRAMP-Ready Cloud Software & Custom ERP Engineering

Federal Cloud Security: FedRAMP Baseline Architecture

Executive Summary

This is how ERPStack engineers custom ERP systems for United States federal programmes. Agencies require cloud software to meet standards derived from FISMA, and FedRAMP standardises the assessment. We design against the FedRAMP security controls at the Moderate and High baselines — boundary protection, FIPS 140-3 validated cryptography, PIV and CAC authentication, continuous monitoring — on Next.js, TypeScript, and PostgreSQL, described end to end in Terraform.

Where Our Role Ends

This is the part most vendors leave vague, so we will not. AWS GovCloud (US) and Azure Government carry ITAR and export-control access restrictions requiring US-person vetting. ERPStack is an India-domiciled firm with no US entity today. We architect for those environments and document the control implementation; the deployment, the operating personnel, and the authorisation itself belong to your FedRAMP-authorised cloud service provider or systems integrator. If you need 1 vendor to both build and operate inside GovCloud, we are not that vendor, and we will say so on the first call rather than in month 4.

System Boundaries and Access

Boundary protection. The authorisation boundary is drawn before schema design, not after. Edge filtering, a Web Application Firewall, and intrusion detection guard ingress, and every external interconnection is enumerated in the system security plan rather than discovered during assessment. Zero-Trust Security is the default posture: no implicit network trust between the Next.js tier and PostgreSQL.

Access control and cryptography. IAM policy in AWS is least-privilege by default. Cryptography uses FIPS 140-3 validated modules — the NIST standard titled Security Requirements for Cryptographic Modules — for data at rest and in transit over TLS 1.3. Multi-factor authentication is mandatory for administrative access, with PIV and CAC smart cards supported through your SSO provider over SAML 2.0 or OIDC. RBAC roles map to directory groups rather than to local accounts, which turns an access review into a directory query.

Continuous monitoring. Semgrep SAST and dependency scanning run in GitHub Actions on every commit. System logs are captured in real time, hashed, and mirrored to write-once storage, because a log anyone can edit proves nothing to an assessor.

Audit Schema

// Write-once federal audit log in PostgreSQL, defined with Drizzle ORM.
// Configuration-table changes raise an immediate compliance alert.
import { pgTable, serial, text, timestamp, varchar } from 'drizzle-orm/pg-core';

export const fedrampAuditLog = pgTable('fedramp_audit_log', {
  id: serial('id').primaryKey(),
  actorId: varchar('actor_id', { length: 256 }).notNull(),
  actionType: varchar('action_type', { length: 64 }).notNull(), // ACCESS | MODIFY | DELETE
  targetResource: varchar('target_resource', { length: 256 }).notNull(),
  beforeState: text('before_state'),
  afterState: text('after_state'),
  clientIp: varchar('client_ip', { length: 45 }).notNull(),
  timestamp: timestamp('timestamp', { mode: 'date' }).defaultNow().notNull(),
});

Impact Level Is a Design Input

Moderate and High are not 2 settings of one system. High tightens boundary protection, session handling, and audit retention, and it removes the shared-tenancy shortcuts Moderate tolerates. We agree the baseline with your agency sponsor before schema design, because retrofitting High controls onto an ERP designed for Moderate is the most expensive rework in federal delivery — routinely 3 to 6 months of it.

Operational Outcomes

Control implementation documented against the FedRAMP security controls your assessment organisation will test. A cryptographic module list fixed before implementation rather than discovered during it. And an authorisation boundary that your cloud service provider can operate without reverse-engineering the ERP first.

Stack and Boundaries

Federal ERP systems run on Next.js and TypeScript with PostgreSQL behind Drizzle ORM, described end to end in Terraform for deployment into an AWS GovCloud or Microsoft Azure Government account your CSP operates. RBAC is enforced in the Next.js API layer, SSO carries PIV and CAC identity over SAML 2.0, and Zod validates 100% of API boundaries. Semgrep SAST, Vitest, and Playwright run in GitHub Actions on every commit, with Sentry for error telemetry. ERPStack operates 0 federal environments: after handover no ERPStack account reaches your PostgreSQL cluster or your AWS keys.