Skip to main content

Learning for your agency and community.

Create and edit courses from agency materials with AI. Train staff, deliver community programs on Honen or your LMS, and review progress, project work, and reporting evidence.

Book a demo
honen.com/learn/fisma-annual-refresh

What changed this cycle

2 min read273 words

FISMA compliance is not a static checkbox. Each annual cycle brings updated control requirements, revised baselines, and new guidance from NIST and OMB that affect how your system authorization is maintained.

The key changes in NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5

The most significant shift in the current cycle is the consolidation of privacy controls into the main control catalog and the addition of supply chain risk management as a new control family. Both changes require agencies to revisit their system security plans and assess whether existing controls still meet the updated baselines.

This is not optional housekeeping. OMB Circular A-130 requires that agencies maintain continuous compliance, which means your ATO documentation must reflect current control mappings before the next assessment window.

How authorization boundaries have shifted

Cloud-hosted systems and shared service environments introduced ambiguity around where one agency's authorization boundary ends and another's begins. The current guidance tightens that definition, requiring explicit documentation of inherited controls from FedRAMP-authorized services.

If your agency relies on any cloud infrastructure, this affects your System Security Plan directly. Review your inheritance table and confirm the FedRAMP authorization status of every shared component before your next review.

What happens at your next assessment

Assessors will look for documented evidence that your agency reviewed, acknowledged, and addressed each change in the current cycle. A gap in your POA&M, an outdated control mapping, or an undocumented inherited control will generate a finding.

The goal of this course is to make sure none of those gaps exist before your assessor arrives. Complete each lesson, then run the scenario walkthrough in Unit 4. It mirrors what assessors actually check.

As part of our Accelerate the Workforce initiative, we’re collaborating with NVIDIA to bring professional AI training to students and professionals alike.

Read more

Create and edit complete courses with AI.

AI builds the outline, lessons, activities, and assessments. Review the learner preview and edit every part in chat.

""

CourseAssessmentAtomResearch

Enter your topic

Choose the audience, learning goals, and course language.

Sources

fisma-controls.pdfnist-800-53.pdfato-checklist.mdrmf-guidance.pdf+ 4 more

Add your materials

Upload files or use your shared Knowledge Base.

Tell the assistant what to change…

Create, preview, and edit

Ask AI to revise any lesson, activity, assessment, or project.

Book a demo

See the editor and learner experience with our team.

Great training. Built to last.

Publish with confidence.

Bring proposed changes into one review queue. Compare the edits, preview the course, and approve the version your learners will see.

  • Changes and course preview side by side
  • Comments and decisions in one place
  • Reviewers chosen for each catalog

A complete learning experience.

Courses in multiple formats

Complete course outputs in every format: articles, videos, flashcards, quizzes, podcasts, and lectures generated from your policy docs, NIST guidance, and agency materials.

honen.com/learn/introduction-to-photosynthesis

Introduction to Photosynthesis

3 min read458 words

What is Photosynthesis?

Photosynthesis is the biological process by which green plants, algae, and certain bacteria convert light energy into chemical energy stored in glucose. It is one of the most important biochemical processes on Earth.

Fun Fact

Photosynthesis produces approximately 300 billion tons of sugar each year - enough to fuel virtually all life on the planet.

The Two Stages

Photosynthesis occurs in two main stages:

  1. •Light-Dependent Reactions - Occur in the thylakoid membranes
  2. •Light-Independent Reactions (Calvin Cycle) - Occur in the stroma

A diagram showing the two stages of photosynthesis: light reactions in the thylakoid membrane producing ATP and NADPH, and the Calvin Cycle in the stroma using those products to fix CO2 into glucose.

A diagram showing the two stages of photosynthesis: light reactions in the thylakoid membrane producing ATP and NADPH, and the Calvin Cycle in the stroma using those products to fix CO2 into glucose.
A diagram showing the two stages of photosynthesis: light reactions in the thylakoid membrane producing ATP and NADPH, and the Calvin Cycle in the stroma using those products to fix CO2 into glucose.

The Chemical Equation

The overall equation for photosynthesis can be written as:

6CO2+6H2O+light energy→C6H12O6+6O26CO_2 + 6H_2O + \text{light energy} \rightarrow C_6H_{12}O_6 + 6O_2

This tells us that carbon dioxide and water, in the presence of light, produce glucose and oxygen.

Chlorophyll

The green pigment found in chloroplasts that absorbs light energy (primarily red and blue wavelengths) and reflects green light, giving plants their characteristic color.

Light-Dependent Reactions

These reactions take place in the thylakoid membranes and require direct sunlight:

  • •Photosystem II (PSII) absorbs light at 680 nm
  • •Water molecules are split (photolysis): 2H2O→4H++4e−+O22H_2O \rightarrow 4H^+ + 4e^- + O_2
  • •Photosystem I (PSI) absorbs light at 700 nm
  • •NADP⁺ is reduced to NADPH

Key Insight

The oxygen we breathe is actually a byproduct of photosynthesis - it comes from the splitting of water molecules, not from CO₂.

The Calvin Cycle

The Calvin Cycle uses the ATP and NADPH from the light reactions to fix carbon dioxide into organic molecules:

Plain Text
Step 1: Carbon Fixation
  CO₂ + RuBP → 2 molecules of 3-PGA
  (Catalyzed by RuBisCO)

Step 2: Reduction
  3-PGA → G3P (using ATP and NADPH)

Step 3: Regeneration
  G3P → RuBP (using ATP)

For every 3 molecules of CO₂ that enter the cycle, 1 molecule of G3P is produced. It takes 2 G3P molecules to make one glucose.

Common Misconception

The Calvin Cycle is sometimes called the "dark reactions," but this is misleading. While it doesn't directly require light, it depends on ATP and NADPH from the light reactions and typically occurs during the day.

Why Photosynthesis Matters

"Photosynthesis is the most important chemical reaction on Earth - it provides the food and oxygen that sustain nearly all life."

  • •Neil Campbell, Biology

Photosynthesis is foundational because it:

  1. •Produces oxygen for aerobic organisms
  2. •Fixes carbon from the atmosphere into organic molecules
  3. •Provides energy that flows through food chains
  4. •Regulates climate by removing CO₂ from the atmosphere
Book a demo

Explore lessons, practice, and tutor support.

See how every employee is doing. In real time.

An agency-wide view of completion, mastery, and engagement. Drill into any department, team, or employee the moment a metric moves.

Book a demo

Your funder reports, compiled for you.

Honen turns your training data into the government files you have to submit. Pick a report, it's built.

Reports it compiles

  • PIRLWIOA Title I → WIPS
  • NRSAdult Ed (Title II)
  • RAPIDSRegistered Apprenticeship
  • Perkins VCTE Annual Report
  • ETPCA Employment Training Panel
  • ETPLEligible Training Provider List

Why it's easy

  • Built from your delivery

    Enrollment, hours, completion, skill gain, and credentials fill themselves.

  • Import the rest in a click

    Demographics and wages upload by CSV and match to learners automatically.

  • Know what's missing instantly

    A readiness check flags any gap before you file, no surprises.

  • One group or the whole agency

    Scope any report to a cohort, an employer, or agency-wide.

  • Audit-clean, every time

    The exact columns each system expects, download and submit.

  • No spreadsheets

    No manual tallying, no reformatting, no last-minute scramble.

Deployments available on AWS GovCloud (US) for optimal security and sovereignty workloads.

Your questions, answered.

Ask the Workspace Assistant about your learners and it answers in plain English, with the analytics inline.

Book a demo

From what you know to what they can do.

  1. Knowledge

    Connect your documents and keep a shared source of truth.

  2. Authoring

    Create Courses, Assessments, and Atoms. Shape every part in chat.

  3. Learning

    Lessons, practice, projects, and a tutor alongside each learner.

  4. Delivery

    Teach in Honen, publish a Site, or use your existing LMS.

  5. Measurement

    See progress, find learning gaps, and decide what comes next.

Use Honen as your learning platform

Host your content, teach learners, manage assignments, and track progress in Honen.

Use Honen with your existing LMS

Create learning content in Honen and deliver it through your LMS with LTI, SCORM, or cmi5.

Frequently Asked Questions

Book a demo

It builds, updates, and manages compliance training and workforce programs from plain-English instructions. Upload policy documents, updated NIST guidance, SOPs, or briefing recordings. Tell the agent what learners need to know and prove. It generates the course, assessments, and scenarios, all under your review.

Agency handbooks, FISMA control documentation, SOPs, ethics standards, SME recordings, policy memos, slide decks, and existing training videos. Honen ingests whatever your agency already has and builds courses around it. You do not need new content to get started.

Learn by doing. Real incident simulations, hands-on compliance scenarios, role-play decision trees, and an always-on AI tutor sit alongside reading, video, flashcards, podcasts, and lectures. The output is designed for applied readiness and measurable understanding.

Tell the Course-Editor Agent what changed, whether a new policy memo, updated NIST guidance, a revised IRP template, or a new OPSEC brief, and it refreshes the affected lessons across your catalog without resetting employee progress or breaking your audit trail. The agent flags weak sections based on learner signal so you know where to review first.

SAML 2.0 and OIDC single sign-on, SCIM provisioning, Section 508 accessible by default, and full audit logging on every learner interaction. Roll out updates without resetting progress, and configure access by role, division, or duty station from the admin console.

Yes. Each role gets a scoped view: supervisors see direct reports, division leads see their division, and the workspace admin sees the agency. Audit logs are exportable for oversight queries. No cross-division visibility unless explicitly granted.

Loading latest news