Don Sesler, The Technology Whisperer: As the owner, I have the honor of leading a team of super-smart individuals who share my passion for helping entrepreneurs and business owners not fall victim to complex technology challenges that can kill productivity. We want to tame your technology so that it works for you and not the other way around. What technology problem is making your life more complicated than it should be? Reach out to me and tell me your story.

DoD Compliant Cybersecurity For All

Department of Defense contractors all over the country are grappling with the DoD’s newest cybersecurity requirements, CMMC, which are designed to keep our nation’s secrets secure. At Sageplan we help government contractors adhere to these new requirements, and the same methods and standards that they use can be used to improve the security and stability of many other industries’ IT infrastructure.

Let’s take a quick look at what they are doing, and why their approach can benefit almost any business.

 

I’m Not a DoD Contractor. Why Should I Care?

While CMMC Level 1 is a great place to start the evaluation of your internal IT program, there are a lot of companies that could benefit from many of the Level 2 practices as a way to ensure that their IT infrastructure is an asset to business operations. Most companies who would benefit from adopting some or all of the Level 2 standards share at least one of the following three challenges in their business:

  • Compliance to Regulatory Standards: Many industries are required to adhere to regulatory standards. If your business involves mining, manufacturing, finance, energy, healthcare, insurance, or telecommunications just to name a few, you should already be familiar with the regulatory requirements of your industry. CMMC pulls on the best cybersecurity and document safety practices from these sectors, meaning that chances are good you could learn a great deal from studying their procedures.
  • Complexity in Operations: If your company struggles with the challenges that come along with a complex business environment like remote workers or multiple offices scattered across a region or the globe, CMMC can help you think about how to keep the collaboration going for your team while also keeping your information secure.
  • CAD and Big Data: If you are using powerful computers in your design or manufacturing operations, making sure you have the right resources allocated to the right teams can quickly overwhelm your IT team if they don’t have the right practices in place.

What Does the CMMC Standard Do?

The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) is a program that is designed to help Department of Defense contractors meet the ever-changing cybersecurity threats and safeguard the information that supports and enables our military. The current standard defines three levels of IT best practices for any entity that does business with the DoD:

  • Level 1 (Foundational): This is the minimal baseline of 17 practices that all DoD contractors must follow, regardless of the product or service provided. Even if your business provides nothing more than office supplies or janitorial services, you must meet the Foundational IT standards if you want to keep your contract.
  • Level 2 (Advanced): Level 2 ratchets up the number of practices from 17 to 110, and is the category that most contractors will fall into. While most of these practices will be familiar to the big contractors like Boeing or Raytheon, the requirements are now finding their way down to any company that could potentially have access to confidential information that the bad guys might like to steal.
  • Level 3 (Expert): This level adds some additional practices as well additional assessments and audits. Not many organizations will need to meet this standard, but those that do will have to put a lot of effort into getting it right.

Most companies don’t need to invest the time and effort to achieve the equivalent of CMMC Level 3 cybersecurity compliance, but almost every company can and should use the DoD Level 1 Self-Assessment Document as a benchmark for their in-house baseline IT practices.

How Any Business Can Make Their IT Operations More Effective

If you need help getting your IT operations under control, we tailor our support to meet your business needs:

  • Small Business Without Compliance, Complexity, or CAD challenges normally can be served by our Managed IT Plan for small business.
  • Non-DoD Companies with Compliance, Complexity or CAD issues will be better served by the CompleteCloud Platform that we offer in alliance with Avatara.
  •  DoD Contractors who understand the importance of meeting the CMMC certification can meet those standards in a quick and cost-effective way by considering the DoD Compliant IT Platform that we offer (also in alliance with Avatara).
 

Not sure which one is right for you? As always, you can schedule a free consultation with me and I’ll be happy to help you decide which platform makes the best sense for your business.