Zero trust has moved from concept to mandate across the federal government — but mandate and maturity are not the same thing. Many agencies have deployed the tools, met the policy checkboxes, and produced the architecture diagrams. What they often lack is the evidence that those controls are working: testable access policies, quality telemetry tied to real detections, bounded exceptions with expiration dates, and delivery pipelines where what was built, approved, and deployed can actually be verified
Spry Methods’ 2026 Q2 White Paper — Cybersecurity and Zero Trust Gaps in the Modern World — was written for the practitioners doing this work: federal cybersecurity architects, identity leaders, SOC managers, platform engineers, DevSecOps teams, and technical program managers responsible for modernizing enterprise security controls in hybrid, legacy-constrained, and mission-critical environments.
Grounded in NIST SP 800-207, NIST SP 1800-35, CISA’s Zero Trust Maturity Model, NIST SP 800-218, and NIST SP 800-204D, this paper avoids tool-specific prescriptions and focuses on what actually separates programs that reduce implicit trust from programs that relocate it.