Federal Zero Trust Architecture is built on a foundational principle established by the U.S. Department of Defense: trust nothing and verify everything. No user, device, system, network, or service is inherently trusted, regardless of where it operates. Every request to access federal systems must undergo continuous verification.
The urgency behind adopting a Federal Zero Trust Architecture accelerated in 2021 when President Biden issued an Executive Order mandating stronger cybersecurity across government agencies. The order recognized a critical truth: threats are omnipresent, both inside and outside agency networks, making perimeter‑based defenses obsolete. Zero Trust is now a strategic requirement for the entire federal government.
Federal Zero Trust Architecture: A Strategic Mandate for Agencies
As the US Government progresses towards Zero Trust Architecture, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a strategic memorandum. Emphasizing the importance of access control in an effective Zero Trust Architecture framework. Complete device visibility emerges as a critical requirement that poses challenges for both federal and private entities.
The memorandum explicitly highlights the necessity of leveraging data from diverse sources to make informed decisions. Such as analyzing device and user information to evaluate the security posture of all activities on agency systems.
Sepio platform directly strengthens an agency’s Federal Zero Trust Architecture strategy by delivering the one capability most agencies struggle to achieve: full, real‑time device visibility, including unmanaged, unknown, and rogue hardware assets. Through intelligent device behavior analysis and continuous risk scoring, Sepio helps agencies enforce Zero Trust principles at the hardware level—an often overlooked but critical layer of the federal attack surface.
Empower your agency with a stronger Federal Zero Trust Architecture (ZTH). With Sepio, you gain the visibility, intelligence, and control required to secure every device, strengthen access decisions, and build a more resilient Zero Trust ecosystem.
Improving the Federal Zero Trust Architecture Strategy with Sepio
Below is a list highlighting the ways in which Sepio’s platform can assist Federal agencies in achieving a comprehensive Zero Trust Model (ZTM). Through complete device visibility and a focused analysis of device behavior based on the specifications of the strategy.
1. Office of Management and Budget’s Federal Zero Trust Strategy
Agencies maintain a complete inventory of every device authorized and operated for official business…
Sepio, provides agencies with ultimate device physical layer visibility fingerprinting. Sepio sees all assets operating within the enterprise’s infrastructure, whether they are managed, unmanaged or hidden.
More importantly, Sepio reveals the device’s true identity through Physical Layer fingerprinting technology and a unique Machine Learning algorithm. The deep visibility allows Sepio to calculate a digital fingerprint of all devices, ensuring a complete and accurate asset inventory.
2. Office of Management and Budget’s Federal Zero Trust Strategy
…and can prevent, detect, and respond to incidents on those devices.
The platform compares each asset’s digital fingerprint against its extensive threat‑intelligence database to instantly identify vulnerable or malicious hardware. When a weakness is detected, the system alerts administrators so they can take appropriate action. If a harmful device appears within the environment, an automated mitigation process is triggered to block the unauthorized equipment. In addition, the platform integrates with existing security tools to ensure rapid response and streamlined remediation.
3. Office of Management and Budget’s Federal Zero Trust Strategy
The devices that Federal staff use to do their jobs are consistently tracked and monitored, and the security posture of those devices is taken into account when granting access to internal resources.
Sepio ensures that every device is continuously verified at every given moment to ensure it is trustworthy. Through Physical Layer fingerprinting, Sepio can accurately determine a device’s risk posture to ensure access is granted to only the devices which are permitted.
4. Office of Management and Budget’s Federal Zero Trust Strategy
Agencies must ensure their Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools meet CISA’s technical requirements and are deployed widely.
Sepio supports agentless deployment for its host and network device identification and risk scoring, requiring no traffic monitoring, to allow for widespread implementation within just 24 hours.
5. Office of Management and Budget’s Federal Zero Trust Strategy
Some specialized systems, such as mainframes and connected devices, may not have compatible EDR tools available. These systems are still at risk of compromise or misuse and may require defenses from other zero trust mechanisms to mitigate risk.
Sepio gathers Physical Layer information of all hardware assets and integrates with existing security solutions to easily automate policy enforcement and mitigation processes for devices without compatible EDR tools.
6. Office of Management and Budget’s Federal Zero Trust Strategy
Federal security teams and data teams work together to develop data categories and security rules to automatically detect and ultimately block unauthorized access to sensitive information.
Sepio enables federal agencies to enhance the protection of sensitive information by enforcing access controls based on a device’s attributes. Sepio’s policy enforcement mechanism allows the system administrator to define a set of rules for the system to enforce based on device characteristics. Any device that breaches the pre-defined rules automatically gets blocked from accessing the protected data.
7. Office of Management and Budget’s Federal Zero Trust Strategy
User authorization through ABAC and RBAC can be used to allow or deny access by enforcing checks based on the user’s identity, the attributes of the resource being accessed, and the environment at access-time. For example, information about the device the user is using provides the basis for a common environment-based check.
Sepio gathers the Physical Layer information of all devices to provide a more holistic overview of the user and ensure that access controls are properly enforced. Further, Sepio’s rogue device mitigation capability prevents the exploitation of privileged user access through vulnerable or rogue devices.
8. Office of Management and Budget’s Federal Zero Trust Strategy
The risks posed by weakened or compromised devices increase significantly in environments that serve a wide range of users, endpoints, and destinations, particularly those relied on by agency personnel for daily operations.
The platform identifies and reports unauthorized, suspicious, or unstable hardware operating on network interfaces that could be easily exploited. It highlights anything behaving abnormally so potential threats can be addressed before they cause harm.
See every known and shadow asset. Prioritize and mitigate risks.
Talk to an expert. It will help you understand how to use Sepio’s patented technology to gain control of your asset risks.
