Accreditation Acceleration: Continuous ATO Through Automation

An approach to accelerating ATO and enabling continuous authorization by automating control evidence generation, integrating security scanning into delivery pipelines, and establishing continuous monitoring — reducing accreditation timelines from months to weeks.

PRACTICE

Platform Engineering & Secure Delivery

CLIENT PROFILE

Program office or system owner seeking to reduce Authority to Operate (ATO) timelines through automation, continuous monitoring, and evidence generation

Challenge

ATO processes taking 12–18 months with extensive manual documentation effort
Point-in-time assessments that become stale immediately after authorization
Disconnection between development, security, and accreditation teams

Approach

Map RMF controls to automated evidence sources (scan results, config baselines, audit logs)
Implement continuous monitoring dashboards that report control status in real time
Automate STIG compliance checking and generate machine-readable assessment results
Establish ongoing authorization process with automated POA&M tracking

Typical Outcomes

Reduced ATO timeline through automated evidence collection and generation
Continuous authorization posture replacing point-in-time assessments
Improved collaboration between development, security, and accreditation teams

Procurement Paths

GSA MAS for RMF and accreditation advisory services
DoD ESI for DevSecOps and security scanning platforms
NASA SEWP V for compliance automation tooling

Partner Technology Examples

GitLab
Tenable
Elastic Security
Palo Alto Networks

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