By Mary Lazzeri
We ve been talking about Authority to Operate (ATO) automation for several years now, even before former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer Nick Sinai posed the radical question, Could it be possible to complete the ATO process in just 24 hours?
Fortunately, the short answer is: Yes, now we can.
The ATO problem
The muddled, bureaucratic process to obtain an ATO and launch an IT system inside government is widely maligned but beyond that, it has become a pervasive
threat to system security. The longer government takes to launch a new-and-improved system, the longer an old and potentially insecure system remains in operation.