The Foundation for Zero Trust Assesments
NodeZero® is purpose-built for the demands of federal cybersecurity. NodeZero Federal™ is FedRAMP® High Authorized and specifically designed to continuously validate the operational effectiveness of Zero Trust Controls within Production Federal environments.
NodeZero is more than just a compliance aid; it provides the continuous, operational proof necessary to ensure the most sensitive missions are operating securely with a Zero Trust functional approach and meeting practical security requirements.
This functionality is mapped directly to the critical US Federal compliance frameworks and mandates, including FedRAMP, NIST, CMMC, and CDM, aligning perfectly with the national push toward Zero Trust.
Ready for Zero Trust Operational Proof
NodeZero validates the efficacy of your Zero Trust controls across the required Pillars and Cross-Cutting Functions within your specific environment. Beyond merely claiming alignment, its core functionality ensures that Zero Trust controls are genuinely operational. NodeZero facilitates the automation of assessment and manual process activities over time. With NodeZero you don’t just claim Zero Trust alignment, you prove it!
Universal Zero Trust Capabilities NodeZero Supports
- Users / Identity – NodeZero models real attacker behavior after initial access, compromising user and service identities, chaining credential-based attacks, and attempting privilege escalation. It validates whether identity controls actually stop attackers, exposing exploitable weaknesses in Active Directory configurations, MFA enforcement, and excessive privileges.
- Device – It discovers unmanaged or non-compliant endpoints and tests whether endpoint security (EDR/XDR) can actually detect and stop real attack paths, not just theoretical threats.
- Application & Workload – It probes exposed services and applications for exploitable flaws, chaining these with identity/network weaknesses to show end-to-end compromise potential.
- Data – NodeZero goes beyond exploiting CVEs, and surfaces where sensitive data can be reached/exfiltrated, validating whether data-access policies and controls are effective in practice.
- Network & Environments – NodeZero actively tests segmentation by attempting lateral movement across VLANs, subnets, and cloud tenants, surfacing where Zero Trust boundaries fail to contain an attacker.
- Automation & Orchestration – NodeZero can be scheduled or integrated into any continuous validation workflows to include Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) initiatives by supporting a ‘find–fix–verify’ loop rather than annual point-in-time tests.
- Visibility & Analytics – Each autonomous pentest delivers attack-path validated findings and proof-of-exploit, giving you concrete evidence to feed into SIEM/SOC processes and measure the effectiveness of your analytics stack.
- Governance –NodeZero can validate the policy, delivering the oversight and accountability layer for Zero Trust. NodeZero sits at the center of enterprise Zero Trust technical controls, measuring and validating whether those controls work in practice and providing evidence for auditors and leadership.
*NOTEs on the Zero Trust Frameworks in Federal
- DoD Strategy and Reference Architecture define seven (7) capability pillars.
- US Federal Civilian Agencies follow the CISA Maturity Model that gives you five (5) broad pillars and three (3) cross‑cutting functions; DoD takes the same foundations and promotes Visibility/Analytics and Automation/Orchestration as pillars. The last change is that governance is included into each pillar versus treating it as its own pillar.
US Federal Zero Trust Sustainability & Requirements
- DoD Zero Trust Reference Architecture – NodeZero’s continuous, adversary-emulating validation supports the DoD’s outcomes for user, device, network, application, and data protections, especially for operational/mission systems. It directly aligns with the DoD’s Zero Trust Capabilities and Activities framework.
- Alignment to Federal OMB M-22-09 (Federal Zero Trust Strategy) – NodeZero has been used by agencies to map across Zero Trust Pillars and confirm that controls are effective in production, not just another paper compliance.
- NIST SP 800-207 (Zero Trust Architecture) – NodeZero is mapped directly to the core requirements and tenets: asset discovery, segmentation, privilege escalation, dynamic policy validation, continuous assessment, and audit-ready reporting. It covers the technical controls for authentication, authorization, segmentation, continuous monitoring, and reporting that are central to an effective Zero Test cybersecurity framework.
Deep Dive into the DoD Zero Trust Capabilities and Activities for NodeZero
The DoD is a highly prescriptive Course of Action (COA). The DoD Zero Trust Strategy outlines 7 pillars each representing a critical area of protection. Broken down across 45 capabilities and further outlined in 152 defense‑grade Zero Trust activities, aimed at hitting Target ZT by FY27.
With the DoD Capabilities & Activities (152 activities) under the Target vs. Advanced levels, NodeZero can help in the real-time evaluation of 134 of the 152 DoD Zero Trust Activities. With support of 79 of the 91 Targeted Activities as the continuous monitoring required for Zero Trust.
Zero Trust Functionality built into NodeZero
- Continuous, Autonomous Pentesting – Unlimited, production-safe tests (internal, external, cloud, Kubernetes, AD, segmentation, phishing, insider, etc.)
- Rapid Retesting – Use our “1-Click Verify” to immediately prove fixes worked, closing the find-fix-verify loop for POA&Ms and compliance evidence.
- Measurable Risk Reduction – Tracks Mean Time to Remediate (MTTR), Mean Time to Mitigate (MTTM), and Recurrence Rate for executive/oversight reporting.
- Automation via Force Multiplier – Enables lean federal teams to scale security validation without scaling headcount. Integrates with NodeZero MCP Server, ServiceNow, Jira, SIEMs, and more via NodeZero API.
Proving Zero Trust Continuously
NodeZero Federal’s approach is all about turning compliance from a burden into a provable security advantage. It’s a mission-ready platform that provides real, evidence-driven security, capable of withstanding any federal audit or adversary.
Key Capabilities:
- Continuous Zero Trust Validation: It continuously validates Zero Trust controls, moving security from annual checklists to a continuous, operationally-aligned model.
- Automated Evidence Generation: The platform automates the generation of evidence required for compliance.
- Rapid Retesting: It enables quick retesting to confirm fixes.
- Prescriptive Alignment: It is aligned with the prescriptive Zero Trust Capabilities & Activities (152+ activities), including Target vs. Advanced levels and detailed timelines.
NodeZero Federal allows agencies to see exactly where they stand on Zero Trust, what works, what doesn’t, and how to fix it, replacing excessive paperwork with objective validation.
Federal Compliance & Frameworks
NodeZero Federal is built to streamline and automate compliance for Federal Organizations with:
- NIST 800-53 Rev. 5 – Controls mapped, continuous technical validation, and evidence
- CMMC 2.0 / DFARS / NIST 800-171/172 – Continuous risk/vuln assessment for Level 2+, ensuring an annual pentest for Level 3, and proof of control effectiveness
- CDM, FISMA, C2C, & CORA – Audit-ready outputs, rapid retesting, and continuous monitoring for ATO/POA&M support
NodeZero’s outputs are audit-ready and mapped to these frameworks so you can prove not just that you scanned (found), but that you remediated (fixed) what matters, and validated (verified) it with real-time, adversary-styled tests.
Conclusion
The framework of Zero Trust is only as strong as its ability to withstand real-world attack paths. NodeZero Federal shifts Zero Trust from a policy-driven exercise to an operational discipline, continuously validating that controls work as intended inside production environments. By replacing static assessments and legacy assurance with adversary-emulated proof, agencies gain clarity, accountability, and confidence in their Zero Trust posture. The result is not just compliance with federal mandates, but demonstrable resilience that stands up to auditors, leadership scrutiny, and most importantly the real adversaries.