Navigating DoD Impact Level Certification — A Cloud-Native Product’s Guide
622 controls, 20 families, 4 impact levels, 11 steps to Provisional Authorization — a comprehensive guide for cloud-native products navigating DoD IL certifi...
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Perspectives
Cybersecurity strategy, compliance automation, defense technology, and the evolving federal authorization landscape.
Recent Posts
Authorization Readiness Levels: The Missing Dimension of Dual-Use Strategy
5 ATO pathways x 9 readiness levels — a framework introducing Authorization Readiness Levels for dual-use companies navigating government authorization.
Building a Compliant CI/CD Pipeline for Public Sector: GitHub, GitLab, and the Authorization Boundary
How to operate modern CI/CD pipelines using external tools like GitHub or GitLab while maintaining FedRAMP, DoD Impact Level, or agency-specific ATO complian...
The ATO Bottleneck: Why Authorization Takes So Long and What Actually Fixes It
The ATO bottleneck is not fundamentally a documentation problem or a process problem. It is an information quality problem.
FedRAMP 20x: A Step Forward on Paper, A Marathon in Practice
FedRAMP 20x does not reduce the total work required to achieve authorization. It changes who does the work and what skills they need to do it.
How to Accelerate the ATO Process Without Cutting Corners
The organizations that move fastest through ATO are not the ones that take shortcuts — they are the ones that automate the rigor.
SBOM Best Practices: From Executive Order to Operational Reality
Generating SBOMs is only half the battle — operationalizing them as continuous security tools is what separates compliance theater from actual risk reduction.
Securing AI Models in the Defense Sector: Threats and Mitigations
The security of AI systems cannot be treated as an afterthought — defense organizations must develop specialized AI security capabilities before adversaries ...
Platform Update: What’s New in Optimal Q1 2026
Q1 2026 delivers runtime threat detection, enhanced SBOM dependency graphs, STIG automation improvements, and AI security enhancements.