Service
Architecture and evidence built against NIST SP 800-171, CMMC 2.0 and FIPS 140-3 from the start, so the audit is a reporting exercise rather than a rebuild.
Regulators and customers require you to prove your security, not just have it. We design systems so the proof is produced automatically as they run — meaning an audit becomes a report you print rather than a scramble to reconstruct what happened months ago.
Compliance retrofitted at the end of a security program is expensive and usually incomplete. Designing the control mapping and the evidence trail into the architecture costs far less than proving it after the fact.
Protection of controlled unclassified information in non-federal systems. We map each control family to the actual mechanism that satisfies it, and flag the ones your architecture currently cannot satisfy rather than writing a plan of action that quietly never closes.
Required through the defense industrial base supply chain. We scope the enclave, design the boundary so the assessable footprint stays as small as it honestly can, and build the evidence collection to match the level you are seeking.
Cryptographic module validation. This one is frequently misunderstood: the validation attaches to the module, not to your product. We inventory every cryptographic operation in the design, identify which need validated modules, and document the boundary.
The expensive part of an audit is rarely the control — it is proving the control was operating throughout the period. We instrument for that during design: automated configuration evidence, tamper-evident logging with defined retention, and a control-to-artifact map an assessor can follow without a workshop.
Every control maps to exactly one named mechanism and one automatically collected artifact. Where a control maps to "process" rather than a mechanism, we flag it — process controls without a generated artifact are where audits fail, because nobody can prove the process ran in March.
| Control | Mechanism | Artifact | Cadence |
|---|---|---|---|
| 800-171 3.1.1 — limit system access to authorized users | IdP group membership bound to role | Nightly group export, hashed and stored | Daily |
| 800-171 3.4.1 — maintain baseline configurations | Config-as-code repo with signed commits | Commit log + drift-detection report | Continuous |
| 800-171 3.14.1 — identify and correct flaws | Vulnerability pipeline with SLA clock | Remediation report with open/closed ageing | Weekly |
Organizations subject to several frameworks routinely run parallel compliance programs against the same underlying controls. That is a duplication of cost, not a duplication of assurance.
| Mechanism | NIST 800-171 | CMMC 2.0 L2 | ISO 27001 | SOC 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Role-based access with quarterly review | 3.1.1, 3.1.2 | AC.L2-3.1.1 | A.5.15 | CC6.1 |
| Centralized, tamper-evident logging | 3.3.1, 3.3.2 | AU.L2-3.3.1 | A.8.15 | CC7.2 |
| Encryption of CUI at rest | 3.13.16 | SC.L2-3.13.16 | A.8.24 | CC6.7 |
| Vulnerability remediation with SLA | 3.14.1 | SI.L2-3.14.1 | A.8.8 | CC7.1 |
One mechanism, one artifact, four framework views generated from the same evidence.
An estate spanning AMER, EMEA and APAC is rarely subject to one regime. We map once to the underlying mechanism and derive each jurisdiction's view from the same evidence, rather than running parallel programs that prove the same control three times.
| Market | Regime | Applies to | What it changes in the build |
|---|---|---|---|
| EMEA | GDPR | Anyone processing EU/UK personal data | Telemetry is personal data. Retention, lawful basis and transfer mechanism must be designed in, not added later. |
| EMEA | NIS2 | Essential and important entities in the EU | Incident reporting inside 24 hours for early warning; management is personally accountable. |
| EMEA | DORA | EU financial entities and their ICT providers | Third-party register, exit plans and mandated resilience testing. |
| EMEA (UK) | Cyber Essentials / Plus | UK public-sector supply chain | A defined technical baseline, externally verified for Plus. |
| APAC (ANZ) | Essential Eight | Australian government and suppliers | Maturity-level targets per control, assessed rather than self-declared. |
| APAC (ANZ) | IRAP / ISM | Australian government systems | Assessment by an endorsed IRAP assessor; data must generally stay onshore. |
| APAC | MAS TRM, Singapore CCoP | Singapore financial and CII operators | Prescriptive OT and resilience requirements for critical infrastructure. |
| LATAM | LGPD (Brazil) | Processing Brazilian personal data | GDPR-shaped obligations with local reporting specifics. |
| Global | ISO/IEC 27001 | Anyone | The common spine. Most other regimes can be derived from a well-run ISMS. |
| Global (OT) | IEC 62443 | Industrial operators and vendors | Zone and conduit architecture — see SCADA and ICS security. |
This is the single most common cross-border mistake we are called in to unpick. Endpoint telemetry contains usernames, hostnames, file paths and process command lines — personal data under GDPR and LGPD, and frequently subject to onshore requirements under IRAP and several APAC regimes.
A platform that ships all telemetry to a single US region is a transfer problem that surfaces during an audit, long after the architecture is fixed. Decide residency before the deployment design: regional collection with local retention, and only aggregated or pseudonymised data crossing a boundary. Retrofitting this means redeploying the estate.
FIPS 140-3 validates a cryptographic module — a specific version of a specific library or hardware element, on a specific platform, listed on the NIST CMVP register. It does not validate your product, your system or your company.
Consequences people are surprised by: using a validated module incorrectly does not give you a validated posture; upgrading the library invalidates the specific validation you relied on; and "FIPS compliant" is a marketing phrase with no standing, as against "FIPS validated" with a certificate number you can look up.
What we actually do: inventory every cryptographic operation in the design, identify which fall inside the boundary requiring validated modules, select modules with current certificates, document the boundary, and configure the module in its approved mode — which is frequently not the default.
The scoping decision in month 2 is what made the other nine months affordable. See CMMC compliance services.
Bring us the estate you actually have — mixed OS fleets, ageing routers, unmanaged IoT — and we will tell you what can be unified under one agent and what needs custom work.
