By Jonathan Holmes, CTO, Greymatter.io
As the CTO for Greymatter.io, I work closely with our customers and see firsthand how some of the most sophisticated systems struggle to keep on top of cybersecurity. It’s not about throwing more money at the problem, but a framework and mindset to instill precautions throughout the business without reducing productivity.
In today’s API-driven economy, zero trust is not a luxury but a necessity. Recent high profile cyberattacks underscore the critical need for robust investigative and remediation capabilities to defend against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. API security incidents more than doubled last year, with 37% of organizations reporting breaches, up from 17% previously. Salt Security’s data highlights the rising threat and urgency for better API protection across industries. In response, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued Memorandum M-21-31 to strengthen zero trust strategies. The memo outlines improved logging, centralized log management, and stronger incident response protocols for federal agencies.
At Greymatter, we are committed to empowering federal agencies and our private sector customers to meet these challenges head-on. Our platform supports M-21-31 compliance, helping customers meet Event Logging maturity levels EL1 through EL3. At the same time, it strengthens their overall zero trust infrastructure. Here’s how we support these critical efforts:
Centralized Log Management for Actionable Insights
M-21-31 emphasizes centralized access to logging data to facilitate timely and effective responses to cybersecurity incidents. Greymatter simplifies logging by sending user behavior audits to centralized systems, unifying logs from diverse sources into one view. This capability helps federal agencies meet EL1–EL3, enabling precise detection, investigation, and response to cyber threats.
Advanced Security Automation and Orchestration
As our customers progress through M-21-31’s maturity model, the need for automated security measures becomes critical. Greymatter offers advanced security through GitOps-managed playbooks, enabling seamless integration of security workflows. It automates FIPS-compliant certificate management and tracks TLS details, enhancing insight and control over cryptographic assets. These features ensure a resilient and scalable security posture for organizations navigating complex threat landscapes.
Zero Trust Architecture Support
M-21-31 supports the federal zero trust mandate in EO 14028 and NIST 800-207, emphasizing least privilege and secure operations. Greymatter eases zero trust with strict access controls, continuous verification, and advanced interoperability across systems. Greymatter helps manage diverse environments with multicloud and edge network interoperability. It also supports strict NIST and DoD security standards, even in resource constrained settings.
At Greymatter, our mission is to make zero trust adoption straightforward and effective. We do this with automatic policies, FIPS-compliant encryption, real time audits, and unified management for APIs, services, and applications. These capabilities not only enhance application readiness but also ensure robust security—all while maintaining operations in high stakes environments.
As a result, our customers are now achieving an 80% reduction in the time required to assess and deploy new capabilities into production environments, significantly enhancing efficiency and agility.
User Behavior Analytics for Early Threat Detection
The effectiveness of tools used for security insight, correlation, and threat detection depends on the quality and depth of data they receive. Greymatter directly supports M-21-31 objectives by delivering robust user behavioral audit streams without the need to touch the existing application’s codebase. By integrating with diverse tools, Greymatter enhances visibility into application networking traffic and transactions, generating audit streams that provide critical insights into who is performing what actions, when, where, and how. These audit streams enable customers to conduct detailed network traffic analysis and correlate enhanced data with other collected information to drive actionable threat intelligence.
Aligned with the centralized logging and user behavior monitoring requirements of M-21-31, Greymatter’s advanced network traffic audits allow security teams to efficiently monitor, detect, and investigate potential threats. By analyzing traffic patterns, identifying anomalies, and scrutinizing suspicious behaviors, customers gain comprehensive visibility into network activities. Greymatter’s integration with threat intelligence systems further strengthens these efforts, delivering real time updates on application activity and identity attribution.
Furthermore, Greymatter’s user behavior audit streams offers continuous monitoring of network and user patterns, providing early detection of emerging threats and enabling teams to track malicious activities effectively. These capabilities are essential for agencies striving to meet M-21-31’s standards for user behavior monitoring, centralized log management, and comprehensive risk mitigation in today’s evolving cybersecurity landscape.
The Path to EL3 Maturity with Greymatter
OMB’s M-21-31 memorandum sets ambitious yet achievable goals for federal agencies, starting with EL1 (basic logging requirements) and progressing to EL3 (advanced logging and security capabilities). With Greymatter’s Zero Trust Networking Platform, agencies can:
- Leverage Greymatter user behavioral audit stream to implement centralized logging and ensure complete insight across systems.
- Leverage automation to reduce the burden of manual threat response.
- Create dashboards indicating which TLS versions, Cypher Suites, and ECDH curves are being used across the enterprise to detect and lower risks.
- Stay compliant with federal cybersecurity mandates while driving operational excellence.
M-21-31 represents a critical step forward in safeguarding federal information systems. Greymatter stands ready to support agencies on this journey, providing the tools and technologies needed to meet and exceed zero trust requirements. Together, we can build a more secure future, one log, one response, and one secure connection at a time.
Ready to learn more? Contact us to explore how Greymatter can help you accelerate and achieve your zero trust journey.
