For government agencies and their cloud service providers, FedRAMP High Authorization is a critical but daunting milestone. It’s the benchmark for platforms that handle the federal government’s most sensitive, unclassified systems — such as law enforcement, emergency response and national security workloads. But the process is notoriously complex. Authorizations often take 18 to 24 months, demand extensive documentation and require large, specialized teams to get over the finish line.
These demands, while rooted in legitimate security concerns, can stall innovation. Many vendors avoid the FedRAMP High path entirely. For smaller companies, even FedRAMP Moderate can be out of reach. In a digital landscape where cyber threats evolve by the hour and mission needs can’t wait, the current process isn’t always aligned with operational urgency.
A faster, leaner model emerges
Late last month, cybersecurity platform provider RegScale announced it had achieved FedRAMP High Authorization with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as its sponsor. The company completed the process in just six months—three times faster than average — and said it reduced labor by 95% using its own automation and Continuous Controls Monitoring platform.
“FedRAMP High has a reputation for being slow and painful and for good reason,” said Travis Howerton, RegScale’s co-founder and CEO. “But it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. With the right automation and modern architecture, you can move fast, stay secure and meet the government’s toughest standards without burning out your team or stalling innovation.”
The company’s approach included automating documentation, embedding compliance checks into its development pipelines and generating machine-readable controls to satisfy all 410 required security baselines. While unique in speed, the underlying strategy points to a larger shift in how compliance might be approached across the federal landscape.
Rethinking the role of compliance
Compliance has traditionally been treated as a destination — a point-in-time certification effort bolted onto the end of a development cycle. But in today’s continuous deployment environment, that model introduces friction. Each code update, configuration change, or infrastructure tweak can restart the cycle of evidence collection and review.
“The old playbook for FedRAMP isn’t built for today’s world,” said Howerton. “You can’t run agile development while dragging compliance behind you in a spreadsheet.”
Across the industry, security leaders are echoing that sentiment. Emerging best practices include compliance as code, real-time risk scoring and integration of control checks into DevSecOps workflows. The goal is to treat compliance less like a reporting exercise, and more like a living part of the development process — one that evolves in sync with the software itself.
Aligning with FedRAMP 20x goals
This shift is consistent with the federal government’s own goals under the FedRAMP 20x initiative. The program aims to simplify authorizations, improve automation and reduce redundancy in security assessments. At its core, 20x calls for a cultural change in how agencies and vendors think about compliance.
“FedRAMP 20x is more than a government goal — it’s a challenge to the entire industry to step up,” Howerton noted. “We can’t keep treating compliance like a one-off project that drags on for years.”
The emphasis on machine-readable controls, continuous monitoring and data-driven validation is gaining traction. While not every organization is equipped to overhaul their processes overnight, the shift toward integrated compliance models is underway.
Building for what’s next
As agencies seek secure platforms to meet mission needs, the ability to achieve and maintain compliance without sacrificing agility will become a key differentiator. Automating control implementation, reusing validated components and embedding compliance into DevOps pipelines offer clear operational benefits.
For vendors, this means investing in development practices that align security with delivery. For agencies, it means prioritizing technologies and partners that support real-time compliance and reduce the overhead of traditional audit cycles.
FedRAMP High will likely remain a high bar by design, but it no longer has to be a long road. As more organizations adopt continuous compliance models, the authorization process may begin to reflect the speed and scale that modern federal operations demand.
Tony Bradley is a technology and cybersecurity journalist, content marketer and public relations professional based in Detroit. He specializes in translating complex tech trends into engaging stories for business and consumer audiences.
