Continuous Compliance in Complex Lab Environments: NLIT Summit 2026 Takeaways

The Department of Energy (DoE) and its National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) labs operate across diverse, distributed, and mission-critical environments that span research systems, manufacturing enclaves and classified networks dedicated to national security, nuclear nonproliferation and emergency response. Cybersecurity is critical to those operations.

On May 4-7, 2026, the National Laboratories Information Technology (NLIT) Society hosted their yearly NLIT Summit in Kansas City, Missouri.

The NLIT Summit attracted hundreds of IT professionals interested in topics ranging from AI and UX to Business Intelligence and DevSecOps. The Cybersecurity track alone featured more than 50 sessions covering risk management, resilience, operational technology challenges and more.

Real world case studies from the National Labs

SteelCloud’s, Erin Miller presented a session called, “Sustain STIG Baseline Integrity in Complex Laboratory Environments,” demonstrated how unified automation addresses the full lifecycle of compliance challenges and ensures continuous compliance and perpetual audit readiness.

During her session, Erin outlined two compelling case studies of National Lab entities who switched to unified automation with SteelCloud’s ConfigOS and achieved significant ROIs while reducing risk:

• Failed CORA Use Case: A national-security manufacturer failed their CORA and had six months to remediate or face quarantine review. Their current hybrid approach using SCAP and manual remediation wouldn’t help them meet their deadline in time. They deployed ConfigOS, which continually scans and remediates STIG/RMF requirements with little human intervention. Results:
  • Passed follow-up CORA
  • Reduced endpoint admin effort from 20 hours per endpoint to 3 hours per endpoint
  • Achieved $2.6M annual cost avoidance (a 60%-75% spending reduction)
  • Maintained continuous compliance and audit readiness

• Leaving SCAP Behind: A DoE group using SCAP to help automate their compliance processes found the tool lacking when it came it to policy customization, CAT 1/2/3 prioritization, remediation and reporting, making quarterly STIG updates cumbersome. They implemented ConfigOS, that delivers full lifecycle STIG automation, customization, agent-based deployment and centralized management. Results:
  • Reduced STIG administration effort by 75% (from 32 to 8 hours per OS per year)
  • Achieved $7.8M cost avoidance across 6300 endpoints (70% cost savings)
  • Accelerated remediation cycles
  • Maintained continuous compliance and continuous audit readiness with minimal manual intervention

Explore ConfigOS and the Conversations from NLIT Summit 2026

SteelCloud was on hand, discussing ConfigOS in their booth and answering questions on how the platform customizes both STIG and CIS Benchmarks implementation security baselines.

If you missed the presentation, don’t miss the opportunity to see all the things ConfigOS can do to save time, effort and budget while improving your readiness and security posture overall. Schedule a demo and see it for yourself.