The General Services Administration’s 18F organization has developed a security certification process for government information technology systems through the use of agile development methods, Nextgov reported Tuesday.

18F’s agile-based authority-to-operate process aims to apply an iterative approach to IT security authorizations and place security work at the start of a project.

“What we try to do is at the very beginning of the project, the first few weeks, we get an ATO,” Michael Torres, director of product at 18F, told Nextgov.

“And then every piece after that, we increment that ATO so it covers more and more of the system,” he added.

Torres noted about 18F’s efforts to further develop the iterative ATO process with security personnel at federal agencies.

“What we’re advocating is to help them and help the program team just focus on this small piece that we’re releasing so that we can make sure that that’s secure and also put in processes and maybe some infrastructure to make sure the next time we release there’s a process for an iterative ATO that doesn’t take as much time and is not as daunting,” he added.

The U.S. Navy debuted early this year a program that allows the service branch to conduct and direct for the first time mission-based and threat-focused inspections of cyber operations.

The Office of Compliance and Assessment of the U.S. Fleet Cyber Command introduced the Command Cyber Operational Readiness Inspections program for the evaluation of threats and vulnerabilities in applications, data, networks and information systems for organizational missions, the Navy said Tuesday.

Capt. Kristian Kearton, director of OCA, said the office will form cyber inspection teams to mature the inspection process.

FCC OCA has relieved the Joint Forces Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Networks on the comprehensive performance and CCORIs and Command Cyber Readiness Inspections for the Navy as a component of the U.S. Cyber Command and U.S. Strategic Command.

Cmdr. James Brown, OCA mission support and inspection team officer in charge, said CCORIs provide assessment of mission and DODIN risks from network cybersecurity states to unit commanders, USCYBERCOM heads and the JFHQ-DODIN.

The CCORI group of three teams of eight includes agents from OCA inspection, support commands and partner sites and conducts mission, vulnerability and threat element assessments for the identification of technical and non-technical risks of external and insider attacks to critical systems.

FCC/C10F consists of over 16,000 reserve and active sailors and civilians across 40 Cyber Mission Force units and 26 active and 26 reserve commands all over the world.

The FCC also serves as the commander of the Navy’s Service Cryptologic Component for the National Security Agency/Central Security Service.

The C10F supports the cyber/networks, cryptologic/signals intelligence and space operations of the Navy and joint forces and employs a task force structure for the implementation of FCC’s missions.