Beyond DevSecOps: When Compliance Becomes a Feature, Not a Burden

| Insights
Many federal teams still treat compliance as a manual, end-stage task—slowing delivery and increasing risk. MetaPhase’s OrangeAI suite supports a new model: compliance as a built-in feature, not a burden. By embedding policy-as-code, automated evidence, and real-time validation into CI/CD workflows, agencies reduce ATO timelines, improve audit readiness, and align with Zero Trust and FedRAMP Rev. 5 standards. With tools like OrangeATO, OrangeCI, and OrangeIaC, compliance becomes continuous, traceable, and mission-enabling.
Beyond DevSecOps - OrangeAI Suite

DevSecOps has become the standard language of modernization in government IT. But in practice, most federal software delivery environments are not yet delivering on its promise. 

Security is still layered on late in the process. Compliance is handled manually and often separately. Documentation is stored outside the pipeline. And audit readiness is treated as a final step instead of a continuous process. 

The core problem is not just the tooling. It is the way compliance is viewed: as a constraint, not a capability. 

To evolve federal delivery into something truly secure, auditable, and fast, compliance must move from being an obligation to becoming an embedded feature of the system. 

DevSecOps Is Not Enough 

The term DevSecOps implies integration. But most government programs that adopt it are still struggling with: 

  • Manually created control documentation 
  • Disconnected security scans 
  • Delayed and siloed audits 
  • Infrastructure that changes faster than compliance can track 

In many cases, security policies are written in Word documents while systems are being defined in Terraform. Authorization boundaries are managed separately from codebases, and logs are reviewed weeks or months after incidents occur. 

This model cannot keep up with the speed of agile development or the complexity of cloud-native architectures. 

According to the 2021 Executive Order 14028 on Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity, agencies are expected to adopt secure software development practices that include automation, verification, and continuous monitoring of security controls [1]. Simply shifting left is not enough. Compliance must live inside the system, not adjacent to it. 

Compliance as a Feature: What It Means 

When compliance becomes a feature, it is no longer managed in isolation. It becomes something that is delivered alongside the application and its infrastructure. 

This approach includes: 

  • Codified policies that are version controlled and testable 
  • Security gates in pipelines that validate compliance automatically 
  • Structured evidence generation triggered by CI/CD activity 
  • Control traceability from code to system to documentation 

This is the model being encouraged by the Department of Defense’s Software Modernization Strategy, which calls for continuous Authority to Operate (cATO) models and tighter integration between engineering and compliance workflows [2]. 

The General Services Administration (GSA) has also supported policy-as-code efforts through its Technology Transformation Services, recognizing that documentation alone is no longer sufficient to assure compliance at scale [3]. 

Why This Matters 

Traditional compliance models introduce drag into the delivery lifecycle. They also produce risk. When systems are authorized once and updated frequently, there is no guarantee that the system in production reflects the system that was reviewed. 

This is what leads to “compliance drift.” It is not a failure of security posture; it is a failure of synchronization. 

By treating compliance as a feature, agencies reduce this risk while gaining the ability to: 

  • Deploy more frequently with confidence 
  • Reduce time to ATO 
  • Improve audit response times 
  • Align to Zero Trust and FedRAMP requirements in real time 

FedRAMP Rev. 5, for example, mandates tighter alignment between systems, their controls, and the visibility of those controls through structured documentation and automation-ready evidence [4]. 

What This Looks Like in Practice 

Agencies adopting compliance as a feature often use: 

  • Policy-as-code frameworks such as Open Policy Agent (OPA) to encode access, security, and resource constraints in machine-readable formats 
  • Compliance scanning tools embedded in pipelines that validate against NIST 800-53, FedRAMP, or CMMC 
  • Tagging and resource classification to enforce consistent metadata for cost centers, environment boundaries, and audit controls 
  • Immutable infrastructure and audit logging built into IaC templates 

This model does not just improve compliance readiness. It creates systems that are inherently more secure, easier to validate, and faster to recover when change occurs. 

The Role of OrangeAI 

The OrangeAI suite was designed to make this model operational. It includes tools that integrate security, compliance, and auditability from the ground up: 

  • OrangeATO produces structured, testable evidence packages mapped to control baselines 
  • OrangeCI injects security validations, quality gates, and policy checks directly into delivery pipelines 
  • OrangeIaC provisions infrastructure with built-in tagging, least privilege enforcement, and control mapping 
  • OrangeTDD builds test automation that links to requirements and controls for full traceability 

Each tool contributes to a delivery system where compliance is not a separate task. It is an expected and visible property of each change. 

The Business Impact 

Programs that have adopted a compliance-as-code approach report: 

  • A reduction in ATO cycle time from several months to several weeks 
  • Fewer audit findings due to always-available evidence 
  • Improved coordination between security, engineering, and delivery teams 
  • Higher delivery velocity without sacrificing traceability 

These are not theoretical benefits. Agencies such as DHS, GSA, and DoD are already piloting and scaling these approaches through Continuous ATO programs, GitOps frameworks, and automated authorization toolchains [5]. 

Questions for Leadership 

If you are in a leadership role and responsible for delivery or cybersecurity, consider asking: 

  • Is compliance tied directly to code, pipelines, and infrastructure, or does it exist in separate documents? 
  • Can your teams produce audit-ready evidence with every deployment? 
  • Are your policies enforced continuously, or only reviewed periodically? 
  • Are your delivery and security teams collaborating, or operating in silos? 

If the answer to any of these is unclear or negative, there is an opportunity to make compliance a competitive advantage. 

Final Thought 

DevSecOps was never about putting “security in the middle” of development and operations. It was about making security an equal participant in the delivery lifecycle. 

Compliance as a feature is the natural evolution of that vision. It allows systems to be secure by default, provable by design, and auditable without delay. 

With the right architecture, tools, and mindset, agencies can finally stop treating compliance as a barrier and start using it as a foundation for speed, scale, and trust. 

References: 

[1] Executive Order 14028, Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity, The White House (2021) 
[2] Department of Defense Software Modernization Strategy, Office of the DoD CIO (2022) 
[3] GSA Technology Transformation Services, Digital.gov, “Policy-as-Code for Public Service” 
[4] FedRAMP Rev. 5 Baselines, General Services Administration (2023) 
[5] DHS Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation Program (CDM), CISA.gov