Modernizing RMF for Continuous, Evidence-Based Security

The fastest way to move RMF away from compliance and into the mission space is to stop treating authorization as a milestone and start treating it as a continuous engineering process. RMF shouldn’t be a side activity; it should be embedded in how a system is built, deployed, and maintained. That starts by tying every security control to a clearly defined, mission-relevant risk—and making sure senior leadership owns the decision to mitigate, transfer, or accept that risk. Care must be taken to ensure that risk ownership does not drift downward; while responsibilities can be delegated, authority cannot.