AWS Public Sector Blog
Transforming federal IT with Datadog’s FedRAMP Class D (High) solution
Federal agencies are modernizing their digital services to better support citizens, improve reliability, and meet cybersecurity requirements. This involves upgrading legacy applications, implementing zero-trust architectures, accelerating cloud adoption, and maintaining compliance with frameworks such as the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP).
Datadog, an Advanced Technology Partner in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network, provides AI-powered observability and security. With AWS Competencies that validate their expertise in 11 categories, Datadog provides comprehensive visibility across hybrid and multicloud environments. Agencies can use this solution to understand and secure their full technology footprint.
Modernization requires visibility across evolving infrastructure—from legacy systems to cloud-based services. Agencies must monitor application performance, validate security controls, track resource utilization, and identify risks across distributed systems. Unified observability helps teams to make faster, more informed decisions and maintain a consistent security posture.
In this post, we explore how federal agencies can accelerate modernization, improve cybersecurity incident response, and support continuous compliance monitoring using Datadog’s FedRAMP Certified – Class D (High) observability and security platform.
Meeting federal agency needs with Datadog’s FedRAMP Class D (High) platform
With Datadog’s FedRAMP Class D (High) certification, federal agencies can use Datadog solutions to bring sensitive, mission-critical workloads into a unified, secure observability platform. IT, DevOps, and security teams gain real-time visibility across their full infrastructure. Teams can detect issues faster, improve reliability for citizen-facing applications, and align modernization efforts with federal security standards.
Datadog supports key agency requirements through enhanced visibility, integrated security operations, and modernization-focused capabilities.
Datadog provides comprehensive infrastructure visibility through:
- Unified monitoring across on-premises, hybrid, and multicloud environments
- High-resolution metrics, logs, and traces
- Automated service discovery and dependency mapping for hosts, containers, and services
- Correlated telemetry to accelerate root-cause analysis and reduce mean time to resolution
With Datadog, agencies can enhance their security operations and compliance monitoring with:
- Cloud Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) for real-time threat detection and investigation across AWS, on-premises, and containerized workloads
- Built-in FedRAMP Class D (High) dashboards for monitoring NIST 800-53 controls
- Integrations with AWS Config, AWS CloudTrail, and AWS Security Hub
- Continuous audit trail collection for accountability and traceability
- Unified interface for operational, security, and compliance signals to reduce alert fatigue
Datadog helps agencies accelerate modernization initiatives by offering:
- Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and distributed tracing for microservices, APIs, and serverless workloads
- Deep visibility into containerized and Kubernetes environments
- Built-in integrations with 100+ AWS services including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), AWS Lambda, and Amazon CloudWatch
- Service-level objectives (SLOs) and performance baselines to guide modernization decisions
These features help agencies accelerate modernization, validate controls, and maintain audit readiness while navigating evolving requirements. The following screenshot shows the Datadog Cloud Security dashboard tracking NIST 800-53 compliance.
Figure 1: Datadog Cloud Security dashboard
AI-driven insights for federal modernization
Datadog applies AI-driven analytics, such as Watchdog anomaly detection, to help teams identify issues earlier. Watchdog automatically flags outliers in metrics, logs, and traces, highlighting unusual patterns that can indicate performance or security risks. It correlates signals across services to accelerate root-cause analysis. These insights help agencies maintain resilient operations for mission-critical workloads.
Reference architecture: AWS and Datadog integration for federal workloads
Federal agencies modernizing on AWS require consistent visibility across cloud and hybrid environments. Datadog provides cross-platform observability that unifies these environments in a secure interface.
A key component of the reference architecture is the Datadog Agent, deployable through AWS CloudFormation templates or AWS Systems Manager. Agencies can use these options to manage the agent securely and at scale across multiple AWS accounts and Regions. The agent collects detailed metrics, logs, and traces from AWS services, offering comprehensive insight into cloud infrastructure performance. The following diagram shows the solution architecture.
Figure 2: Datadog for Government integration with AWS Cloud and customer data center environments
Datadog’s own FedRAMP journey provides a repeatable model for federal agencies. Datadog’s blog post, How We Use Datadog to Further Our FedRAMP® Compliance, outlines best practices—including standardized tagging, centralized telemetry pipelines, and automated monitoring of control families—that agencies can adapt to strengthen their own compliance operations.
To meet FedRAMP’s logging and auditing requirements, Datadog integrates with Amazon CloudWatch Logs. This centralized log ingestion helps agencies satisfy controls such as AU-2: Audit Events. Tagging strategies can enhance reporting, filtering, and compliance monitoring. The following screenshot shows the Datadog Log Explorer dashboard, integrated with CloudWatch Logs.
Figure 3: Datadog integrates seamlessly with CloudWatch Logs
The following screenshot is the Datadog Log Explorer dashboard showing real-time monitoring and log analysis capabilities, with built-in search and filtering for compliance monitoring.
Figure 4: Datadog’s Log Explorer
Datadog’s Cloud SIEM adds real-time threat detection across AWS services, supporting controls such as SI-4: Information System Monitoring. Agencies can create custom rules aligned to FedRAMP-mandated event types and integrate automated alerts with internal incident response workflows. Datadog’s Audit Trail captures platform activity to support accountability and auditing processes.
Visit the AWS FedRAMP page to learn more about the comprehensive requirements to achieve FedRAMP compliance.
The evolution of federal cloud security: FedRAMP 20x and beyond
Federal cloud security is shifting toward automation and continuous validation through the FedRAMP 20x initiative. FedRAMP 20x introduces five major changes:
- Automated validation – Aiming for 80% automation of security requirement validation
- Industry alignment – Commercial frameworks to streamline assessments
- Continuous monitoring – Replacing periodic checks with continuous validation
- Direct agency relationships – Strengthening collaboration for improved outcomes
- Innovation acceleration – Streamlined certification for new services through continuous validation
Datadog supports these goals through automated controls monitoring, integrations with commercial frameworks, and built-in continuous validation capabilities. This automation-first approach helps agencies to focus on mission impact while sustaining strong security.
USDA DISC: FedRAMP-compliant monitoring implementation
When the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Digital Infrastructure Services Center (DISC) needed to modernize monitoring and comply with the Executive Order to Improve Cybersecurity, it partnered with ECCO Select to implement Datadog’s observability platform.
As a federated data center serving 14 departments and bureaus, DISC required a secure, compliant solution capable of supporting a complex hybrid environment. In only 75 days, the team deployed monitoring across thousands of hosts and containers—achieving 95% coverage across cloud and on-premises systems. The implementation included transitioning more than 1,000 monitoring templates while maintaining operational continuity.
The impact was clear. As Chris Condon, Director of Enterprise Observability at ECCO Select, explains,
“We now have a comprehensive solution that not only speeds up root-cause analysis when there’s an issue but continuously provides the visibility we need to keep our systems secure and resilient.”
DISC’s experience demonstrates how federal agencies can meet rigorous security requirements while accelerating modernization with FedRAMP-compliant observability.
Transform your agency’s observability and security posture today
Federal agencies can modernize efficiently with Datadog’s FedRAMP Certified – Class D (High) platform. Visit Datadog for Government in AWS Marketplace to begin a trial or connect with Datadog’s federal team to strengthen operational resilience, improve security visibility, and support mission-critical workloads.