With the ever-changing landscape of technological innovation, federal agencies are facing the reality that a secure digital transformation of their legacy systems is needed to best carry out their missions going forward. But what exactly does that mean?

Moving from legacy systems to faster, modern setups is key to increasing the speed and efficiency needed to best serve the public. But that need to incorporate improved technology must be balanced with RMF requirements, compliance with FEDRamp expectations, and a need to preserve ATO timelines.

Secure Digital Transformation in Government: A Plain English Definition

It is important to correctly frame what is meant by “digital transformation.” It is not throwing a bunch of new tools into a technology stack. Rather, it is a combination of an operating model with proven, effective tech.

And when looking at digital transformation security, that definition is important. Your digital transformation will take your RMF into account as part of your operating model to ensure that risk is reduced as much as possible through built-in controls and continuous monitoring.

What “Secure” Means in Federal Practice

In the reality of federal practice, a security by design approach is what keeps everything on track. That means creating a system that accounts for inheritance, RMF control implementation, continuous monitoring (ConMon), and ensuring that everything is audit-ready from the start.

This is not to say that cybersecurity in digital transformation procedures must slow everything down by necessity. Far from it. By building in guardrails and implementing zero-trust and configuration best practices, you can manage changes through authorizing official expectations quickly while still having the risk documentation you need to stave off problems.

Why Digital Transformation Increases Mission Risk When Done Improperly

The danger that comes when implementing any enterprise modernization roadmap is that there is more digital real estate that can be attacked. As you incorporate SaaS, more automation, increased remote work, and new APIs to connect apps to your content management systems, there is just a lot more stuff to keep track of.

When a secure modernization strategy is not well-thought out and does not have the kinds of guardrails built into it that protect key data and information, it typically takes the form of modernization workflows that outpace RMF artifacts and ATO timelines.

The Biggest Risk Multipliers During Federal Transformation

Keeping track of the biggest risk factors that can drag down your digital transformation is an absolute necessity. Here are some of the biggest risk multipliers:

• Identity sprawl and weak access boundaries.
• Data duplication across environments (including unauthorized copies in SaaS applications that violate compliance and break data governance).
• Shadow IT and unmanaged SaaS.
• Legacy interoperability shortcuts that become permanent dependencies.

The Security-Forward Transformation Operating Model for Federal Programs

In order to implement an effective security focused transformation, utilizing zero trust architecture is the first step. Basically, you want a model that shares accountability for risk across several areas of personnel.

Program leadership, your CISO/ISSO, enterprise architects, dev teams, and ops teams must share in the responsibility of keeping your RMF strong. Each team utilizes the technology stack differently for different purposes, so each team can be accountable for managing risk in the areas that they use.

Sharing accountability and utilizing security measures like strong identity and access management protocols will help keep everyone in compliance with regulations as deliverables are completed. That means FAR regulations are maintained while compliance and audit-readiness is kept in mind. This keeps your transformation secure while keeping acquisitions moving.

Shift from Compliance Checklists to RMF Risk Management

To best institute your new operating model as part of your secure digital transformation, a shift in thinking about how to approach risk and compliance is necessary. Instead of taking a compliance approach focused on checking items off a list, you need to establish risk-based priorities.

It is impossible to give everything equal weight. Creating prioritization trees is an excellent way to implement a risk based security management strategy. Ranking workloads according to mission criticality and data sensitivity requirements helps establish the responsibilities of each branch of your organization. No one group can watch over everything, but by coordinating and prioritizing, different teams within an agency can look out for each other.

Make Security Outcomes Measurable and Briefable to Leadership

In a federal environment, it is important that leadership is able to clearly and effectively outline the efficacy of their RMF and cloud security governance to oversight committees. By establishing KPIs that can track how well your risk management protocols are working, you make it easier to track areas that need more attention. Risk management KPIs can include:

• MFA/PIV coverage with a focus on privileged access management (PAM) and vulnerability remediation time.
• Tracking coverage of encryption at rest and in transit, taking logging completeness and backup/recovery objectives into account.
• Following ATO/ConMon metrics such as POA&M burn-down, control implementation status, and evidence freshness.

Security Measures to Build In, Not Bolt On

As you look at legacy system modernization risks, the most important thing to remember when planning your digital transformation strategy is that by building in guardrails at the start, your RMF will be more effective than it would be if you attempted to tack new measures onto your framework after implementation.

Five key measures can help ensure that your digital transformation is secure and in compliance with FEDRamp and other oversight policies.

Identity-First Security (Zero Trust Foundations)

Identity and access management (IAM) is the number one security measure that must be prioritized across the board. Users must be able to explicitly verify their identities in order to access any system that holds important, confidential data. That also means that access privileges must be carefully tracked — no one should have a greater level of access than they require to complete their tasks.

Data Security and Privacy by Default

Federal programs must be audit-ready at all times. Incorporating data classification and protection measures into your RMF allows you to limit access to only those with proper credentials as well as track encryption and retention.

Secure Application Modernization (DevSecOps and “Secure by Design”)

Incorporating DevSecOps best practices into your digital transformation will go a long way toward maintaining security. Building in threat modeling, SAST/DAST, secrets management, dependency management, and SBOM helps to design delivery in such a way that evidence can be tracked continuously instead of in a scramble at the end of a workflow.

Cloud and Infrastructure Guardrails (FEDRamp/RMF Friendly)

It is a key requirement of a digital transformation to ensure FEDRamp and RMF compatibility. Incorporating policy as code into your digital transformation makes a huge difference. There will be a control inheritance from your legacy system that you can use to see what guardrails can be inherited and which need to be programmed in — things like segmentation or continuous configuration monitoring, for example.

Detection and Response that Matches the New Surface Area

Through SIEM and SOAR integration, central logging, maintaining incident runbooks, and running tabletop exercises, your digital transformation can help shore up resilience in mission critical security. Taking these precautions will help ensure continuity and maintain availability, even when an incident exacerbates operational pressures.

A Practical Roadmap for Modernization Without Increasing Risk or Slowing ATO

To effectively implement a secure digital transformation in a federal environment, following a tried-and-true roadmap can make a massive difference in maintaining mission continuity while upgrading your systems.

• Baseline and Triage: take an inventory of the strengths and weaknesses of the current system to identify ATO blockers early. (0-60 days)
• Guardrails Before Speed: establish a minimum evidence set to continuously support RMF/ ConMon and reduce POA&M churn — establish identity controls, secure SDLC minimums, and logging standards. (60-120 days)
• Modernize in Slices: maintain operational continuity through controlled crossovers and rollback plans of prioritized mission capabilities without cutting off legacy systems too early via a so-called “big bang” transition. (Continuous)
• Prove and Improve: audit artifacts, establish continuous compliance through automation, and utilize the evidence you gather to identify and adjust your RMF based on concrete, observable data. (Continuous)

Where Federal Transformations Can Go Wrong

When looking at digital transformations in the federal program sphere, there are specific pitfalls that you need to be aware of. Beyond taking steps towards ransomware resilience, a federal transformation must be aware of the following potential setbacks:

• Treating security as a series of measures to be brought in at the end of the digital transformation process can lead to late ATO surprises.
• Failure to modernize and codify IAM early on can lead to identity sprawl across environments.
• Migrating data without classification and governance can lead to information leaks.
• Ignoring legacy constraints and compensating controls can result in mission continuity interruptions.
• Buying more and more products before building an operational rhythm overcomplicates everything — establish accountable ownership and evidence pipelines to determine what products you need before engaging in tool sprawl.

What Questions Should Federal Leaders and Prime Integrators Ask Before Approving a Secure Digital Transformation Program?

There are so many factors that go into a successful digital transformation. Before approving a plan to implement modernization in a federal environment, be sure you have answers to these questions:

• What are our mission “crown jewels” and what are the top five threats to those priorities?
• How will access be controlled end-to-end (including access for subcontractors and inter-agency collaborations)?
• What evidence will be produced for RMF/ATO/ConMon and how can it be kept current without manual scrambling?
• Which legacy systems can’t support zero trust controls and how can modernization compensate for that lack of support?
• What is the plan to avoid tool sprawl and maintain consistent guardrails across environments?
• How will delivery be structured to reduce risk to primes such as acceptance criteria and compliance artifacts?

How AI-Vets Supports Secure Digital Transformation

AI-Vets leverages extensive experience facilitating digital transformations for private companies and federal agencies alike to establish practical, unique, and effective roadmaps for every partner.

We know what works. Through a process that leads from assessment to roadmap creation to guardrail establishment to implementation to delivery support, AI-Vets sets our partners up for success. Intelligent planning, patient yet efficient installation, and top-notch support are our calling cards.

Not sure if you are ready for a secure digital transformation? Contact us for a modernization security assessment and/or a transformation risk review to see what improvements you can make to your systems. Technology keeps moving forward, let us put you in a position to take advantage of every new innovation.