Never trust. Always verify.

Zero Trust is a federal mandate, not a buzzword

In May 2021, Executive Order 14028 directed every federal civilian agency to adopt Zero Trust. In January 2022, OMB Memorandum M-22-09 converted that directive into measurable milestones across identity, devices, networks, applications, and data. In July 2022, the Department of Defense published the Zero Trust Reference Architecture v2.0 with a binding target: DoD Zero Trust Target maturity by end of FY27. CISA followed with the Zero Trust Maturity Model 2.0 in April 2023. The policy stack is complete. The engineering work is the hard part.

Precision Delivery Federal engineers Zero Trust architectures mapped line-by-line to the 152 DoD capabilities and the five CISA pillars. We do not sell "Zero Trust" as a product category. We deliver identity-driven policy decision points, identity-aware segmentation, device posture telemetry, continuous authorization signals, and data-centric controls — each one traceable to a specific NIST 800-207 tenet and a specific agency milestone.

The seven NIST 800-207 tenets, engineered

• All data sources and computing services are resources. Every API, database, object store, message queue, and serverless function is inventoried in a resource catalog. Shadow resources are the first thing we hunt.
• All communication is secured regardless of network location. mTLS on every east-west call. No "trusted" network segments. No VPN as a perimeter.
• Access to individual enterprise resources is granted on a per-session basis. Short-lived, audience-scoped tokens. Re-authentication for high-risk actions. No standing trust.
• Access is determined by dynamic policy. Attribute-based access control fed by user identity, device posture, behavioral analytics, data classification, and threat signals. Policy as code in OPA/Rego or Cedar.
• The enterprise monitors and measures the integrity and security posture of all owned and associated assets. Endpoint Detection and Response, vulnerability scanning, configuration drift detection, and continuous attestation.
• All resource authentication and authorization are dynamic and strictly enforced before access is allowed. Policy Decision Point and Policy Enforcement Point separation. No local policy decisions.
• The enterprise collects as much information as possible about the current state of assets, network infrastructure and communications and uses it to improve its security posture. Analytics loop feeding back into policy. Zero Trust is a control system, not a checklist.

DoD Zero Trust Reference Architecture: seven pillars

The DoD ZT RA v2.0 organizes 152 capabilities into seven pillars. For each we deliver specific engineering outcomes:

• User. ICAM consolidation, PIV/CAC/derived credential support, phishing-resistant MFA (FIDO2, WebAuthn), just-in-time access, privileged access management, user behavior analytics. See our Identity and Access Management capability.
• Device. Enterprise device inventory, MDM/UEM enrollment, posture checks (patch level, disk encryption, EDR running), hardware-rooted attestation (TPM, Microsoft Pluton, Apple Secure Enclave), compliance before connection.
• Applications and Workloads. Software-defined perimeters, application-layer gateways, API gateways with per-call authorization, service mesh mTLS, container workload identity via SPIFFE/SPIRE.
• Data. Data tagging and labeling (DoD CDM, Microsoft Purview, Varonis), data loss prevention, rights management, encryption at rest with customer-managed keys, data-in-use protection via confidential computing.
• Network and Environment. Macrosegmentation, microsegmentation, software-defined networking, encrypted DNS, inspection of encrypted traffic at the endpoint not the wire.
• Automation and Orchestration. SOAR playbooks for access revocation, automated policy generation from observed flows, GitOps for policy deployment, chaos engineering for ZT control validation.
• Visibility and Analytics. SIEM, UEBA, XDR, continuous diagnostics and mitigation feeds, analytics pipelines that close the loop back to policy engines. See Security Operations.

CISA Zero Trust Maturity Model 2.0 alignment

For civilian agencies the governing model is CISA ZTMM 2.0. Four stages, five pillars, three cross-cutting capabilities. We deliver to Advanced and Optimal stages across all five pillars, with the cross-cutting capabilities (Visibility and Analytics, Automation and Orchestration, Governance) engineered from the start rather than bolted on.

Identity pillar — Advanced to Optimal

Phishing-resistant MFA enterprise-wide. Centralized identity store. Risk-adaptive access with continuous session evaluation. Just-in-time privilege elevation. Behavioral analytics driving step-up authentication. Automated account lifecycle tied to HR systems of record.

Devices pillar — Advanced to Optimal

Complete device inventory with real-time posture. Hardware root of trust attestation. Continuous validation before and during sessions. Automated quarantine on posture deviation. Integration with EDR/XDR telemetry for compromise signals.

Networks pillar — Advanced to Optimal

Full microsegmentation by workload identity. Encrypted DNS. Service mesh mTLS. Dynamic ingress and egress policy based on identity, not source IP. Elimination of flat internal networks.

Applications and Workloads pillar — Advanced to Optimal

Per-request authorization at the API gateway and service mesh. Secure software development with SBOM, signed artifacts, and SLSA provenance. Continuous authorization rather than point-in-time ATO. Immutable infrastructure patterns.

Data pillar — Advanced to Optimal

Data inventory, classification, and tagging. DLP at rest, in transit, in use. Encryption with customer-managed keys. Rights management travel with the data. Data access analytics feeding policy.

OMB M-22-09 milestones

For federal civilian agencies, the OMB M-22-09 strategic goals set the scoreboard:

• Identity. Enterprise-wide identity systems, phishing-resistant MFA, automated account lifecycle — we consolidate identity stores, deploy FIDO2 security keys or PIV-D derived credentials, and wire up SCIM-driven provisioning.
• Devices. Complete inventory with posture — we deploy CDM feeds, endpoint agents, and hardware attestation for workstations and mobile.
• Networks. Encrypted DNS and HTTPS everywhere, network isolation — we deploy DoH/DoT resolvers, enforce HSTS, and segment by workload identity.
• Applications. Internet-accessible application testing and public-facing authentication — we perform adversarial testing, deploy WAF and bot defense, and expose internal apps via identity-aware proxies rather than VPN.
• Data. Data categorization, tagging, and protection — we build data catalogs, deploy automated classification (Purview, Macie), and enforce encryption with agency-controlled keys.

How we build

1. Current-state assessment. We map the agency's existing identity stores, network topology, application portfolio, and data inventory. We score current maturity against the CISA ZTMM 2.0 matrix or the DoD 152-capability catalog.
2. Target architecture. We design a reference architecture specific to the agency's mission systems — not a generic diagram. Policy Decision Point, Policy Enforcement Point, Policy Information Point, and Policy Administration Point are each mapped to named components.
3. Capability increments. We sequence delivery in 90-day increments, each ending with measurable security outcomes (e.g., "100% of engineering team on FIDO2", "all mission-critical APIs behind identity-aware proxy", "data classification coverage on 80% of Tier-1 systems").
4. Policy as code. Access policies live in source control. OPA/Rego or Cedar policies are tested, reviewed, and deployed through CI/CD with the same rigor as application code.
5. Continuous attestation. We instrument the architecture to produce ZT attestation evidence on demand — not just at assessment time. See our ATO engineering capability.

Federal context and past performance

Bo Peng holds Kaggle Top 200 global ranking and delivered production machine learning on SAMHSA data platforms. Precision Delivery Federal is SAM.gov registered (UEI Y2JVCZXT9HP5, CAGE 1AYQ0) and is pursuing SBIR topics across CDAO, DISA, and civilian agency ZT modernization lines. For the current federal Zero Trust opportunity landscape see our insights on the federal ZT landscape and our mission enclave ZT case study. Agency-specific playbooks live at DoD, CISA, and VA.

Tooling we work with

• Identity: Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, Ping Identity, SailPoint, CyberArk, BeyondTrust, HashiCorp Boundary.
• Device posture: Microsoft Intune, Jamf, CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne, Tanium.
• Network and segmentation: Illumio, Cisco Secure Workload, Zscaler, Palo Alto Prisma Access, Cloudflare Access, Istio, Linkerd, Cilium.
• Workload identity: SPIFFE/SPIRE, HashiCorp Vault, AWS IAM Roles Anywhere, Azure Workload Identity.
• Policy engines: Open Policy Agent (OPA), AWS Cedar, Styra DAS.
• Data protection: Microsoft Purview, Varonis, Symantec DLP, AWS Macie, Google DLP.