Security by Inheritance: How Knox Shrinks the FedRAMP Surface Area for SaaS Vendors

Ask any SaaS founder who’s gone through FedRAMP:

“What was the hardest part?”
And they’ll likely say:
Building infrastructure that satisfies NIST 800-53 controls
Tracking down evidence
Burning budget on security tooling for controls they barely understood

Here’s the problem: most SaaS companies don’t need to own their entire compliance stack.
They just need a smart way to inherit security that already exists.

At Knox Systems, we make that possible—by offering a FedRAMP-authorized shared boundary that takes care of over 80% of the Moderate baseline out of the box.

It’s called Security by Inheritance, and it’s how we’re unlocking FedRAMP for the 1,000s of SaaS vendors stuck on the sidelines.

What’s the Knox FedRAMP Boundary?

It’s a fully operational, compliant, continuously monitored infrastructure environment that:

Meets FedRAMP Moderate control requirements
Has already been assessed and authorized
Can be inherited by SaaS vendors deploying their apps inside it

Think of it as your prebuilt foundation.
You still own your application logic—but the heavy lifting of security is already done.

What Knox Covers for You

When you deploy on the Knox boundary, we handle:

• Physical + network security (PE, SC, AC control families)
  
  
• Continuous monitoring (AU, SI, IR controls)
  
  
• Encryption, identity, access logging, audit policies
  
  
• Control documentation, evidence collection, OSCAL formatting
  
  
• POA&M generation + compliance dashboards
  
  
• Automated drift detection and remediation via CMX

That’s over 80% of FedRAMP Moderate controls handled before you write a single policy.

What You Focus On Instead

With Knox, you only need to manage:

• Your application’s data flow + handling (e.g., PIIs, APIs)
  
  
• Identity management inside your product
  
  
• App-level access controls
  
  
• Your own feature-level logs, alerts, and testing

In other words: you secure what you build—we secure everything else.

The Results

Smaller compliance surface area
Less scope = fewer controls to document
Lower risk = faster “In Process” status
Reduced cost = no need to build and secure your own FedRAMP infra
Higher confidence = your app runs on a platform that’s already trusted by federal buyers

Bonus: This Isn’t Just Faster. It’s Smarter.

Inheriting controls doesn’t just speed things up—it increases control fidelity.

Because Knox’s controls are standardized, audited, and continuously monitored, you benefit from:

• Less duplication of controls
  
  
• More consistent evidence
  
  
• Higher trust from 3PAOs and agency partners
  
  
• Better alignment with FedRAMP reuse strategies
  
  

TL;DR

You don’t need to rebuild your SaaS for FedRAMP.
You just need the right foundation.

Knox’s FedRAMP boundary covers 80%+ of required controls
You inherit infrastructure-level security, evidence, and documentation
You focus only on your app-layer risks
You get to market faster—with less overhead

Building everything from scratch is out.
Smart, inherited security is in.

At KNOX we make FedRAMP accessible—for everyone.

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