Credentials are one of the highest-value targets in any environment, and government organizations are under growing pressure to modernize how they manage credential access without compromising security or oversight. Bitwarden already secures credentials across federal, state, and local governments, providing centralized controls for credentials, secure sharing, administrative policies, audit trails, and integrations with existing identity systems.
To extend that foundation, Bitwarden has announced its commitment to achieving Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Class D (High) Certification for its cloud-hosted Password Manager and Secrets Manager. With this work, Bitwarden will offer a dedicated government cloud deployment option that meets the federal government's highest bar for cloud security.
FedRAMP gives federal agencies a standardized way to evaluate cloud security solutions instead of requiring each agency to assess a vendor’s security posture independently. Class D is the highest FedRAMP security categorization, requiring detailed, ongoing security evidence and reporting to support authorization and procurement decisions.
Once achieved, Class D Certification will give federal agencies, defense contractors, and other federal-adjacent organizations the procedural security verification required for the Bitwarden government cloud deployment option. This clears the way for regulated agencies and public sector organizations to choose Bitwarden as the best solution to secure their sensitive credentials in an easily managed cloud environment.
Bitwarden already supports credential security across the federal government today, including offices in all three branches and teams in more than half of the 15 executive cabinet departments, largely through self-hosted deployment on organizations' own compliant infrastructure. Bitwarden maintains ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, and SOC 3 certifications, with security controls that support compliance with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, NIST SP 800-63B, NERC CIP, GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA requirements.
FedRAMP Class D Certification builds on that foundation. Self-hosting will remain available for organizations that need direct control over their deployment environment, while certification will introduce a dedicated option designed to meet FedRAMP requirements for organizations that want the operational simplicity of a managed cloud.
The planned certification environment will carry forward the Bitwarden differentiators that government customers already rely on, including trusted open transparency, centralized ownership, scalable sharing, and full credential lifecycle management.
Open source transparency. The Bitwarden client and server code is fully open source and independently audited. For a federal security team, that means the encryption and access controls protecting a vault don't have to be taken on faith; they can be inspected directly, rather than relying solely on vendor claims or a point-in-time assessment.
Centralized ownership and scalable sharing model. Every item in Bitwarden is owned by the organization, not the individual employee who created it. This differentiating model provides admins central oversight and full reporting on every credential in the vault, even after the user who created the credential leaves the company. Credentials are stored in the vault, but they can be added to multiple collections without being duplicated. This allows for easy cross-team sharing in a granular, controlled manner, delivering genuine least-privilege access without exposing everything to everyone. And because that single copy lives in the vault rather than being duplicated across collections or folders, an update to a credential is instantly reflected everywhere it's shared, and revoking access removes it from everywhere at once, leaving no orphaned copies behind.
Full credential lifecycle management. This architecture makes full credential lifecycle management possible, securing credentials from creation to retirement while giving continuous visibility into who's using what and whether it's at risk. When an employee leaves or changes roles, admins can see exactly which credentials need to be reassigned, eliminating work disruption and reducing security risk.
Additional details about certification status and availability will be shared as the process advances. Organizations operating under FedRAMP requirements today can self-host Bitwarden on compliant infrastructure they control.
Organizations planning their federal cloud strategy don't need to wait for certification to get started. Learn more about Bitwarden for the government, or contact sales to talk through deployment and compliance needs today.