Can you Afford to Put Off CMMC Any Longer? 

Here’s what you need to know.

Our nation’s cybersecurity is paramount. The DoD has recognized that the need for cybersecurity does not end at their firewalls. It should also encompass the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) that supports them. This gave rise to Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC).

CMMC controls and processes are specifically designed to protect Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). CUI can encompass any personally identifiable information, proprietary business information, “For Official Use Only” information, legal information, and more. In short, it’s data that others can act on and use to wind their way into government systems.

From a business perspective, CMMC shows your government clients that you value and understand their security needs and are willing to go the extra mile for the sake of security. As SteelCloud’s COO Brian Hajost says, “Compliance puts a halo around your proposal” and moves it to the top of the stack.

So, while CMMC is a lot of work, it benefits everyone involved.

Cybersecurity policy compliance is always in your best interests.

CMMC controls are built around NIST SP 800-171 requirements. NIST 800-171 is the basis for many government cybersecurity initiatives. So, prior to the deadline, there has been a recent increase in the number of commercial organizations mandated or have voluntarily chosen to standardize on the Center for Internet Security (CIS) or STIG benchmarks as cybersecurity best practices. But updating and making sure you are compliant is not enough.

In most cases, updating, vulnerability scanning, and configuration management processes are individually managed to match the underlying technologies. However, the devil is truly in the details, such as specific controls and compliance requirements set against each type of infrastructure. And then, there is ongoing management and maintenance of your secure baseline to prevent compliance drift.

But cybersecurity is not just about compliance and a secure baseline. It’s about resiliency, too. While a cybersecurity strategy can help prevent a data breach or reduce the risk of malicious activity, a cyber resilience strategy helps specifically mitigate the impacts of these attacks. Cyber resilience is aimed at continuously delivering the intended outcome, despite the attack. It mitigates the risks and severity of attacks and includes practices such as Zero Trust and continuous diagnostics and mitigation (CDM) for good management configuration.

Moving toward CMMC and NIST compliance in the DIB.

Since the plan for CMMC was established, many things have changed, such as the move to CMMC 2.0, which simplified requirements. And they are still changing. But that is no excuse to sit around and wait. If you want to do business with the government, the sooner you can comply, the more competitive you will be. And it generally takes 12-18 months to do all the work for certification manually.

All you need to do is seamlessly knit together regulations, cybersecurity standards, and best practices to meet each CMMC maturity level and reduce your risk against threats. Here are some tools that can help:

1. NIST 800-128 outlines the National Checklist Program (NCP) that helps you find the specific controls you need to target to get your organization and its products and services secure and compliant.
2. Security Technical Information Guides (STIG) and Center for Information Security (CIS) benchmarks are long-established pathways to help you get where you need to go, as is NIST 800-171, which STIG, CIS and CMMC are all built upon.
3. Automation is key to achieving compliance in a timely, affordable manner. SteelCloud’s ConfigOS is the STIG and CIS hardening and automation standard in the DoD, and the top system integrators use it. It encompasses NIST 800-171 controls and it can accomplish what it would take qualified engineer’s weeks or months to do…in just an hour.

You will need specialists to understand all the best practices, how they interlink and how to identify all the controls. But, with automation, you won’t need a whole team of them to make you compliant and keep you that way. And if you want to prove your commitment to your clients and gain a competitive advantage, being proactive and finishing early will prove your worth. Best of all, automation can shave months off the 12-18 month estimate, helping you achieve your goals and serve your clients securely in a fraction of the time.

Complete your CMMC journey faster than you thought possible.

The race toward CMMC is about to begin. Do you want to be at the front of the pack and show your clients how pulled together and compliant you are? Or are you happy to just cross the finish line whenever you get there? How you answer will show your muster as a member of the DIB.

Automation is key to making security compliance a more efficient and affordable process. If configuration management and compliance weren’t so important and increasingly complex and demanding, it would be fine to take your time and handle the task manually. SteelCloud’s ConfigOS was built from the ground up specifically to address every phase of DevOps security and in every type of environment, from air gap classified environments to regular on-prem environments to the cloud. To learn more and put your CMMC compliance into full gear, request a demo today.