Fast-Track to Authorization: A Federal Agency Guide to Modernizing ATO & cATO
Modernizing the ATO process is one of the top priorities for federal CIOs in 2026, and for good reason: The traditional approach to achieving ATO was built for a different era.
Today, agencies are managing cloud environments, zero trust architectures, and DevSecOps pipelines with compliance tools that haven’t kept pace. The result: ATO packages that take 6 to 24 months, security teams buried in documentation, and control evidence that’s stale the moment it’s exported.
This eBook offers a practical guide to accelerating the ATO and achieving cATO with automation and continuous monitoring. Download it to learn:
- Why the traditional ATO process is failing federal agencies — and what the Executive Branch’s modernization push means for your compliance program
- How to get a new system through the ATO process as quickly and cost-effectively as possible, using machine-readable baselines, automated evidence collection, and AI-assisted documentation
- How to upgrade existing systems from point-in-time authorizations to true continuous compliance (cATO) — without starting from scratch
- How automation transforms every step of the NIST RMF, from Prepare through Monitor
- How a major federal agency achieved $163.5M in projected annual savings and cut audit prep time by 60% by modernizing their compliance program
- Why Zero Trust compliance and ATO automation are natural partners — and how to address both in a single workflow
Whether you’re an ISSO working to streamline your next authorization package, a CISO looking to modernize your agency’s RMF process, or a program manager trying to bring new systems to mission faster, this guide offers the framework, the steps, and the proof points needed to move forward with confidence.
