Page 325 - Cyber Defense eMagazine September 2025

Modern Risk, Modern Response: Federal Cybersecurity

Needs a Compliance Wake-Up Call

By Peter O’Donoghue, CTO at Tyto Athene, and Gaurav Pal, CEO at stackArmor (a Tyto Athene
company)

For years, federal agencies have struggled with the growing tension between innovation and compliance.
As cyber threats evolve and emerging technologies like AI become mission-critical, legacy compliance
frameworks like NIST’s Risk Management Framework (RMF) have increasingly come under scrutiny.
While RMF was built to safeguard systems and data, a broad perception is that has become burdened
by complexity, slowing down the adoption of game-changing technologies.

Today, the Authority to Operate (ATO), once a badge of cyber-readiness, has become a bottleneck.
Government agencies committed to serving and meeting mission operations are frustrated by delays,
mounting paperwork, and manual processes that no longer align with how contemporary systems are
built, deployed, or maintained in the modern era.

But there’s a better way – it doesn’t require throwing out the framework, but instead looks at modernizing
how agencies implement this critical process.

Cyber Defense eMagazine – September 2025 Edition 325
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