Government agencies don’t fail audits because they’re careless. They fail because distributed systems, legacy infrastructure, and complex mission demands make it hard to create, collect, and use verifiable, machine‑generated evidence.
The kind of evidence that proves compliance.
Real accountability isn’t just a document. It’s a continuous signal that government agencies are operating securely and according to mandates and regulations including Comply-to-Connect (C2C) and Zero Trust. Agencies can only generate that signal when they adopt Zero Trust architectures leveraging Universal Zero Trust Network Access (UZTNA).
Here, we break down how visibility, control, and containment are at the heart of every audit finding. We also show how continuous assurance, powered by UZTNA, is the new baseline for government accountability.
The Root of Audit Failure Is a Visibility and Control Crisis
Across countless government audit summaries, the same core failure patterns dominate. Organizations face compounding visibility, control, and containment gaps across assets, data, and policy enforcement. These gaps undermine security and regulatory compliance. Unmanaged devices, shadow systems, and unknown endpoints will continue to proliferate.
At the same time, financial, operational, and IT systems can’t be easily reconciled. Data identifiers do not align. Transactions can’t necessarily be traced end-to-end. It takes dedicated resources to collect and curate all those evidentiary trails. Even where policies are formally defined and meticulously followed, it can be nearly impossible to perpetually gather evidence. Demonstrating that controls are working as designed and consistently enforced is challenging. This leaves the organization unable to detect drift in real time and maintain proof of continuous compliance.
UZTNA enables Zero Trust architectures by closing persistent visibility and control gaps. It does this with comprehensive identity and posture verification of every user and device before granting access — and by constantly re-evaluating trust throughout each active session. UZTNA turns each access request into a continuous, real‑time control and audit artifact, logging every access decision as verifiable evidence that boosts accountability, compliance, and real-time assurance.
Manual Evidence Can’t Keep Up with Modern Oversight
Government oversight has shifted to accommodate systems that change by the millisecond. Screenshots, spreadsheets, attestations, or manual reconciliations won’t cut it anymore. Auditors need:
- Machine‑verifiable logs
- Real‑time dashboards
- Automated control evidence
- Traceability from transaction → system → user → device → policy
UZTNA plays a key role by relentlessly enforcing identity, device posture, and conditional access. It automates the collection of the exact evidence auditors require without adding to the team’s workload.
Go deeper: Download our e-book “Everything You Wanted to Know About Failing Government Audits But Were Too Afraid to Ask.”
Complexity: The Hidden Saboteur of Audit Readiness
Governmental agencies operate as massive, interconnected ecosystems. They span: multiple platforms, decades-old mainframes and open systems, distributed field offices, contractor and third-party environments, and hybrid networks with IT, OT, IoT, and IoMT devices. The scale, the heterogeneity of the infrastructure, and topology create a structural intricacy that overwhelms traditional oversight models. It directly contributes to audit failures. For example, when an OAuth token, a VPN tunnel, or unmanaged device bypasses perimeter-based access controls, the audit chain of trust collapses, and the agency is out of compliance with Comply to Connect and Zero Trust mandates.
UZTNA manages this by replacing those perimeter-based access models with per-session, identity-first verification that eliminates the concept of safe zones and implicit trust. Every connection is explicitly evaluated, actioned, and logged. The result? A compression of the attack surface by sharply reducing orphaned assets, unverified sessions, unmanaged devices, and undocumented access paths.
These are precisely the conditions that surface repeatedly in failed government audits. Consequently, continuous verification is a structural requirement rather than a policy aspiration.
Frameworks Aren’t the Issue, Proof Is
Agencies do not fail audits because requirements from GAO, NIST, or OMB are unclear. They fail because they cannot produce evidentiary proof at scale and in real time. UZTNA strengthens the evidence chain by guaranteeing every access decision is:
- Identity-verified
- Policy-evaluated
- Device-checked
- Logged
- Continuously reassessed as conditions change
This approach maps directly to expectations defined in:
- NIST SP 800-53 access control, auditing, and monitoring requirements
- FISMA reporting obligations
- OMB A-123 and OMB M-23-02 for quantum safe migration
When combined with continuous assurance, UZTNA allows agencies to demonstrate real-time proof rather than assembling it after the fact.
Continuous Assurance: the New Operating Model
Continuous assurance has become the effective standard for what were once annual audits. The Forescout 4D Platform™ with UZTNA operationalizes that shift. Together, they provide unified visibility from a single authoritative view of users, devices, sessions, security posture, and control performance. They replace manual evidence collection with automated control validation. Control events are generated dynamically as policy is enforced.
Every access request is monitored non-stop and systematically documented as a cybersecurity event, a compliance event, and an auditable record by default. UZTNA strengthens the continuous assurance model by making access control explicitly identity-centric, device-aware, posture-validated, and fully logged. With UZTNA, assurance becomes a systemic process rather than a periodic exercise.
UZTNA: Where Zero Trust Meets Audit-Ready Access
UZTNA is critical to government audit success because it turns every connection into an auditable transaction. It verifies users and devices on an ongoing basis. And, it confirms that each session carries full context, posture, and policy enforcement. Any deviation triggers a real-time control response, and every event produces machine-verifiable evidence by default.
In this model, access control shifts from a static configuration to a continuously evaluated security and compliance signal — which is exactly what auditors, CXOs, and cybersecurity leaders require to operate with confidence.
Compliance As Code: the Next Leap Forward
Agencies that adopt UZTNA can evolve toward compliance-as-code, where controls are expressed as machine-readable rules, automatically validated, tested regularly, and logged for auditors without human involvement. For example, when a device drops out of compliance, access is denied, and the control violation is logged. When a misconfiguration is detected, the session is terminated, and a remediation ticket is generated. When a user attempts privilege escalation, the action is denied, and evidence is recorded. When paired with the right security platform, a policy decision engine can enforce governance automatically.
UZTNA Is a Game Changer
UZTNA goes far beyond network access. It is a missing pillar in the government audit puzzle. With continuous assurance, it enables clean audit opinions through demonstrable proof, not just paperwork. UZTNA accelerates remediation, strengthens cyber posture, reduces manual reporting, and supports public trust, mission continuity, and resilience.
Prove Trust Continuously with Forescout
Every failed audit reinforces the same lesson: if a control cannot be verified, it cannot be trusted. With Forescout Continuous Assurance powered by UZTNA, government agencies gain the real-time visibility and control that they need while producing the evidence auditors require. They can also leverage the automation that modern operations depend on to function at scale.