The Risk Management Framework (RMF) is most commonly associated with the NIST SP 800-37 guide for “Applying the Risk Management Framework to Federal Information Systems: A Security Life Cycle Approach,” which has been available for FISMA compliance since 2004.
This was the result of a Joint Task Force Transformation Initiative Interagency Working Group; it’s something that every agency of the U.S. government must now abide by and integrate into their processes. It was most recently integrated into DoD instructions, and many organizations are now creating new guidance for compliance to the RMF.
For all federal agencies, RMF describes the process that must be followed to secure, authorize and manage IT systems. RMF defines a process cycle that is used for initially securing the protection of systems through an Authorization to Operate (ATO) and integrating ongoing risk management (continuous monitoring).