Accelerate your path to FedRAMP ready infrastructure

Gruntwork helps federal contractors and SaaS providers build secure, auditable, and production-ready infrastructure on AWS using Terragrunt and OpenTofu/Terraform. Get a major head start on the infrastructure layer for FedRAMP with modular IaC built to align with NIST 800-53 and AWS security practices.

Compliant infrastructure shouldn’t be so hard

Getting to FedRAMP is notoriously slow and expensive. The technical requirements alone are hard enough to fulfill with hundreds of NIST 800-53 controls to account for. But proving you’ve met them, with full audit trails and documented consistency across environments, is where most projects stall.

Typical challenges of FedRAMP

  • DIY sprawl and config drift: Homegrown Terraform and ClickOps lead to inconsistent environments and failures in boundary protection, logging, and encryption enforcement.
  • Audit complexity: Lacking automated logs and change history makes it painful to prove control implementation—especially under a Third-Party Assessment Organization’s (3PAO) microscope.
  • Security control overload: Encryption, RBAC, log retention, vulnerability scanning, and network isolation often turn into a tangled mess of half-documented infrastructure.
  • FedRAMP baselines keep changing: Keeping up with Moderate/High baselines, evolving FIPS encryption standards, and AWS service updates stretches thin teams even thinner.
  • Hard to self-manage: Even well-resourced teams struggle to maintain secure, compliant environments without falling behind on patching, remediation, or documentation.

Accelerate Gruntwork accelerates your compliance journey

Open source is core to who we are. Our team is the creators of, and maintainers for some of the most used infrastructure open source tools in DevOps.

Key capabilities:

  • Actually-easy audits: Gruntwork Pipelines provide a complete, inspectable trail for every change. See what changed, who approved it, when it was tested, and when it hit prod, all on the same PR.

  • Drift detection and automatic remediation: Make sure whatever’s running matches what’s declared. Run drift detection as often as you like and get pull requests to automatically report and resolve drift.

  • Modular, production-ready OpenTofu/Terraform: Enforce consistency and reduce custom development with pre-built modules for VPCs, IAM, security, and more.

  • Private, segmented network topologies: Enforce boundary protection via private subnets, NAT gateways, NACLs, and security group defaults that reduce audit surface area.

  • Centralized access control and logging: Enforce RBAC with IAM roles, monitor access via CloudTrail, and centralize logs for FIPS-validated retention and review.

Gruntwork helps you cover the infrastructure backbone of FedRAMP Moderate/High baselines. Pipelines enforce change control, Account Factory enforces environment consistency, and Drift Detection catches config issues before your auditors do.

Case Study: Clara Copilot's path toward FedRAMP

Clara Copilot, a dual-use AI startup serving U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), needed infrastructure they could trust to handle national security workloads—without a full DevOps team.

Before Gruntwork

  • One-person DevOps team, who was also an exec
  • Juggling infra with HR, compliance, and fundraising
  • Some Terraform, but mostly ClickOps and untracked scripts
  • Basic AWS setup with inconsistent configs across envs
  • No clear path to enforce NIST 800-53 or 800-171 compliance

With Gruntwork

  • Used IaC modules from Gruntwork’s Service Catalog
  • Rapidly deployed consistent envs using tested, minimal config patterns
  • Laid a strong foundation for future FedRAMP and CUI compliance
  • Audit readiness and dev confidence

Outcomes

  • A faster start toward NIST 800-53 and 800-171 alignment
  • Confidence with DoD stakeholders during early-stage security evaluations
  • Eliminated guesswork with prescriptive IaC patterns for DNS, ECR, IAM, and more
  • Didn’t need to hire a full-time DevOps engineer during a critical growth phase

"Gruntwork put us in a strong position for FedRAMP authorization. The infrastructure is standardized, auditable, and aligned with the NIST controls we need for 800-53 and 800-171. That’s taken a huge burden off my plate.” - Tyson Myhres, Co-Founder & CTO

What sets Gruntwork apart

  • Faster than DIY: Deploy FedRAMP-aligned infrastructure foundations in hours instead of months of internal debate and rewrites.
  • More control than PaaS: Gruntwork runs in your AWS accounts. No lock-in, no shared tenancy, no opaque platforms.
  • Cheaper than compliance consultants: Avoid six-figure infrastructure rewrites and slow handoffs. Gruntwork ships with ongoing updates and engineering support.
  • Built for real DevOps teams: Technical documentation, expert support, and flexibility for engineers — not buzzwords for sales and marketing.
Who Gruntwork is for
  • DevOps engineers at SaaS companies targeting federal contracts
  • Teams pursuing FedRAMP Moderate or High with limited internal resources
  • Startups scaling beyond sandbox environments
  • Mature orgs modernizing legacy environments for NIST alignment