These directives demand continuous compliance, and it’s no surprise that federal cybersecurity professionals are struggling to keep up.
October 20, 2026 5:09 pm
3 min read
When it comes to complying with requirements to address the growing cyber threat landscape they face, many federal government agencies are falling short. Understandably, agency leaders may feel crushed by the unprecedented pressure to address a range of mandates dictated through laws and regulations like the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), FedRAMP and the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Risk Management Framework (NIST RMF). These directives demand continuous compliance, and it’s no surprise that federal cybersecurity professionals are struggling to keep up.
This is because most federal governance, risk and compliance (GRC) programs still run on a model built for a different era – based on manual audits, quarterly reviews, static checklists and evidence scattered across spreadsheets and shared drives. These traditional processes cannot keep pace with constantly changing technology deployed within agencies. By the time a quarterly review is complete, the environment within the agency that was assessed has already changed.
Combine that with the well-documented federal government cybersecurity talent shortage, and it’s no surprise the government’s “consult and advise” approach to GRC has become expensive, error-prone and unsustainable.
GRC engineering offers a way forward by approaching compliance the same way modern teams approach building software. It borrows from DevOps, automating evidence collection and building controls that run continuously inside the same pipelines that ship code. It brings systems thinking, connecting governance, risk and compliance into one flow so a change in the environment shows up where it matters instead of hiding until the next quarterly review.
It applies product-based thinking while treating an agency’s compliance capability as a product with owners, users and a roadmap that gets maintained and improved over time. Approached this way, compliance keeps pace with the technology it is meant to protect. An agency’s scarce security talent can then spend time on judgment and risk decisions, the work that actually needs to be performed by people.
Agencies that adopt GRC engineering do not depart from federal standards. They are fulfilling them more completely than manual processes ever could. For example, the NIST RMF calls for continuous monitoring, ongoing authorization and risk-based decision making. The GRC engineering approach represents the technical implementation of that vision.
In addition, the government’s push toward continuous Authority to Operate (cATO) means agencies must demonstrate ongoing compliance, not just pass point-in-time assessments. And FedRAMP 20x, the program’s 2025 redesign, makes the direction unmistakable by replacing manual documentation with automated validation to compress authorization from years to weeks. This is a direct signal that the federal ecosystem is moving toward engineered compliance.
The benefits of embracing GRC engineering can be substantial. Manual ATO processes routinely take 12 to 18 months, while GRC engineering compresses timelines measurable in weeks, not months. When compliance evidence is generated automatically, audit preparation shifts from a multi-week scramble to a report-generation exercise. Auditors receive machine-generated evidence that is more accurate, current and comprehensive. When compliance is automated and continuous, it stops being the bottleneck it is today.
Most importantly, the agency’s security posture improves. GRC engineering stops entire classes of non-compliant configurations from reaching production, because they would be caught at the commit or deploy phase instead of in a later audit. Controls that are enforced by code do not depend on human memory, training or diligence. Prevention is fundamentally more effective than detection.
Finally, it is worth noting that this approach will not blot out the need for a skilled federal workforce. Rather, automating repetitive compliance tasks will free skilled professionals to focus on risk analysis, threat modeling and strategic decision-making – work that requires human judgment and creates genuine security value. Agencies can do more with existing staff instead of competing for scarce talent to do manual work.
GRC engineering is not just beneficial but essential for federal agencies. This practice delivers across security posture, audit readiness, cost efficiency and mission enablement. It’s time to move away from the traditional approach to GRC and embrace this more efficient way for agencies to achieve better outcomes.
Abdie Mohamed is GRC engineering lead at NR Labs.
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