Core Competencies

  • CMMC Level 1 & 2 Consulting
  • NIST 800-171 Gap Assessments
  • System Security Plan (SSP) & POA&M Development
  • Security Architecture & Network Design
  • Policy & Procedure Development
  • Continuous Monitoring & Audit Readiness
  • External Service Provider (ESP) Integration & Boundary Scoping
  • FedRAMP / FISMA System Support
  • Cyber Risk Management & Governance

As a CMMC Registered Provider Organization (RPO), we could assist you with the following services:

1. CMMC Readiness Assessments

  • Pre-assessment against CMMC Level 1 or Level 2 requirements

  • Gap analysis of current security posture

  • Detailed findings report with prioritized remediation actions

  • Scoring using NIST SP 800-171A methodology (for Level 2)

2. System Boundary & Scoping Assistance

  • Identify where CUI/FCI flows in the organization

  • Define in-scope networks, assets, users, and processes

  • Produce scoping diagrams, data-flow diagrams, and system architecture diagrams

  • Assist with scoping validation before engaging a C3PAO

3. Policy, Procedure, & Documentation Development

  • Create and customize required cybersecurity policies

  • Develop security procedures, SOPs, and governance documents

  • Prepare evidence artifacts aligned with DFARS 252.204-7012 & NIST 800-171

  • Develop and maintain the System Security Plan (SSP)

4. POA&M & Remediation Support

  • Draft Plan of Actions & Milestones (POA&M)

  • Prioritize solutions based on cost, feasibility, and risk

  • Provide technical guidance for meeting control requirements

  • Track and verify remediation progress

5. NIST SP 800-171 / CMMC Control Implementation Support

  • Map organizational practices to CMMC requirements

  • Provide recommendations for meeting each practice and assessment objective

  • Assist with configuration hardening (Windows, M365, MDM, firewalls, etc.)

  • Validate implemented controls prior to formal assessment

6. Cloud & SaaS Security Alignment

  • Guide customers in securing Microsoft 365, Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud for CUI

  • Configure logging, MFA, endpoint management, and identity protections

  • Review cloud architecture for compliance with shared responsibility models

7. Vendor & External Service Provider (ESP) Analysis

  • Evaluate compliance readiness of MSPs, hosting providers, and SaaS applications

  • Assist with risk assessment and contract updates

  • Ensure ESPs meet CMMC/SCR requirements

8. SPRS Score Calculation & Submission Assistance

  • Validate NIST 800-171 implementation

  • Calculate and document the correct SPRS score

  • Assist with official score entry into the SPRS portal

  • Support annual score updates

9. Evidence Collection & Audit Preparation

  • Collect, organize, and validate assessment evidence

  • Prepare a compliance binder for the C3PAO

  • Perform mock interviews and assessor-style walkthroughs

  • Ensure all objectives are measurable and provable

10. Continuous Monitoring & Compliance Maintenance

  • Set up ongoing compliance tracking

  • Quarterly or annual reviews of controls, logs, updates, and incidents

  • Assistance maintaining POA&Ms and updating documentation

  • Provide ongoing cybersecurity advisory support

11. Training & Awareness Programs

  • CMMC non-technical staff training

  • Security awareness and insider threat awareness

  • Training on evidence creation and control ownership

  • Executive briefings on CMMC changes or DFARS updates

12. Pre-C3PAO Assessment Coaching

  • Prepare the client for the certification assessment

  • Resolve last-minute gaps

  • Conduct readiness interviews and simulate assessor questions

  • Support communication with your chosen C3PAO

 

CyberSecurity Consulting:

Our well-trained customer focused Cybersecurity Professionals are dedicated to find an optimized and cost effective security solution that works hand in hand with customer business missions. We incorporate companies’ best practices, implement baselines, and adopt processes that eliminate wasteful or redundant activities and improve efficiencies. Compliance efforts such as FISMA/FedRAMP, HIPAA/HITRUST, ISO 27001/27018, PCI DSS, SOC 2 are becoming a minimum investment to remain in business for today’s cloud service providers. In addition, to meet the compliance standards, organizations also need to understand the roles of a host cloud provider and their own controls to meet requirements within those standards. ACT’s customer centric solutions are built to help cloud solutions providers and users to mitigate the cyber risks, meet compliance standards, and to boost revenue or stay within the budgets.

Our consultants provide clients with a security controls roadmap through its Cyber Risk Assessment services and a scorecard that can help evaluate an organization’s progress toward compliance and take full advantage of its cybersecurity investments.

As organizations increasingly move to cloud services and employees bring more of their own personal devices onto corporate or private networks, the risks of compromising the sensitive data or valuable business information has grown exponentially.

ACT can help cloud service providers to prioritize the cyber risks and find the appropriate cyber risk management and compliance efforts that keeps customer data secure and helps differentiate products to increase profitability.

“Mission’s Success” at a government agency can look different than at a commercial organization. We work closely with the team to create cybersecurity solutions in support of the company’s mission objectives. We also assist with information assurance personnel with certifications to meet a multitude of contractual requirements. We have over a decade of experience to support federal government IT requirements and offer a full range of long-term and short-term cybersecurity solutions to government clients, including:

  • Helping to develop Cloud strategies for the Government and DOD organizations
  • Interpreting National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) for application to government requirements
  • Sourcing staff to meet your mission critical cyber project needs
  • Assessing mobile application security needs
  • Designing and implementing large-scale Continuous Monitoring and compliance reporting programs
  • Developing customer centric cloud solutions integrating cyber securities
  • Implementing programs with custom training supports

Proactive Cybersecurity Solution for Financial Services:

The financial services industry sustainability mostly relies on data security and privacy. As cyber-attacks become more sophisticated, it’s hard to penetrate vaults and guards at the doors won’t offer enough protection against phishing, DDoS attacks and IT infrastructure breaches.

The financial services industry has adopted various IT modernization efforts in recent years to stay competitive. Mobile banking, cloud computing, and new compliance mandates have escalated the information-risk profile of most financial services institutions. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has published guidance on cybersecurity practices that broker-dealers, investment firms and advisors need to adopt.

To compete in this evolving marketplace, financial services industries face the overwhelming task of securing data that often resides outside their offices. Basic physical security compliance is not enough. To secure data including privacy requirements, financial institutions must go beyond compliance to:

  • Define risk
  • Meet compliance mandates
  • Assess the strengths of IT security controls
  • Assess and identify vulnerabilities
  • Improve employee security awareness and offer proper trainings
  • Conduct business impact analysis
  • Test security from the beginning of any solution architecture
  • Develop Incident response plan and train the stakeholders in responding to any security incidents

ACT’s audit, assessment, and engineering consulting services and cloud-based automation solutions help financial institutions balance their compliance and risk management programs with improved business performance. Our optimized risk management and compliance services allow organizations to be more efficient adapting cybersecurity regulations, enhancing data quality, and creating better operational efficiency.

Cybersecurity Advisory and Risk Assessment Services

ACT has been working with its clients on mitigating cyber risks since 2015. We continuously train ourselves and provide leadership, advice, staffing support, and technical skills.

Each of our Cyber Risk Assessment projects is led by fully qualified and experienced senior leaders, and each project is customized to address the unique requirement. These leaders and the well-trained consultants assigned to the project are dedicated to:

  • Understanding or identifying the source of risk and quantifying potential impacts associated with cyber-related business interruptions, compromised data and intellectual properties, legal exposure and reputational damage.
  • Developing organizational security strategy, policies and governance programs, and proposing a prioritized remediation plan based on industry best practices.
  • Implementing controls that help organizations identify, detect, prevent, respond, and recover from cyber threats.

ACT offers the following tailored Cybersecurity Service below:

  • Business Impact Assessments
  • Privacy Impact Assessments
  • Enterprise Risk Assessments for FISMA or FedRAMP compliance
  • Cybersecurity Controls Assessment for obtaining Authority to Operate (ATO)
  • Healthcare Security Risk Analysis and Advisory

FISMA Assessment and Technical Advisory Services

The Federal Information Security and Management (FISMA) Act of 2002 designed to increase the security posture of government agency federal systems, bureaus, departments and their supporting entities, such as vendors and their subcontractors.

Vendors and sub-contractors that provide information systems to agencies must prove, through an annual assessment, that they meet FISMA requirements. This process involves working directly with each agency to achieve an Authority to Operate (ATO) and be assessed to controls based on FIPS 199, FIPS 200 and NIST SP 800-53 Revision 4.

Our cost competitive FISMA assessment and technical advisory services are designed to help meeting your FISMA authorization needs. We work with your project managers to determine the appropriate severity impact of each system or application in completing the FIPS 199 that closely follows the NIST Risk Management Framework (RMF). From the security controls mapping of various environments, to documentation development for a system security plan (SSP), to security testing and POA&M management, we can support you in many areas.

Our services include:

FISMA Assessment

Assess, test and review your information systems with our in-depth testing and assessment capabilities, including:

  • FIPS 199 categorization, FIPS 200 and agency control selection.
  • Assessment of security controls.
  • Implementation of applicable security controls.
  • Authorization recommendation of system and continuous monitoring.
  • Security Assessment Plan (SAP), Rules of Engagement (ROE), and Security Assessment Report (SAR) development.
  • Pen-Testing
  • Wireless and mobile security assessments.
  • Source code reviews.
  • Application, database, and infrastructure vulnerability scanning and analyzing the results.
  • Architecture and system boundary assessments.
  • Architecture optimization and modernization.
  • Configuration management administration and operations.
  • IT security and controls program development.
  • Network design and third-party service provider evaluations.
  • Contingency system planning and additional guidance based on your agency’s requirements.
  • Compliance program pre-assessments.
  • FISMA documentation development, including System Security Plan (SSP), Contingency Plan (CP), Incident Response Plan (IRP), Configuration Management Plan (CMP), Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA), and FIPS 199 Security Categorization, Policies, Procedures, etc.

Our FISMA compliance services help you to

  • Effectively manage risk by integrating security into current and future architectures.
  • Implement a comprehensive and secure compliance program by developing a strategic roadmap.
  • Maintain high assurance that required policies, documentation, and procedures meet compliance standards.
  • Understand the requirements to prepare or assess your solution for FISMA compliance.

Security Monitoring and Analytics

Let’s make informed, smart, and strategic decisions about any security events. Just purchasing smart tools and installing them in your environment could be winning half the battle. Proper configuration and deployment of security solutions maximizes your return on your investment. Our customer-centric team has experience with all the leading security methodologies and security management tools, which allows us to help you find the right tool for the job and maximize its capabilities to address your specific security requirements.

Our security monitoring and log analytics services, teaming up with Splunk, you will receive an accurate picture of your network health and performance so you can optimize your security posture by:

  • Using metrics and analytics to support decisions.
  • Ensuring your team know how to get the most out of your security investments.
  • Identifying opportunities to automate and streamline data reporting and collection.
  • Progressing through the Splunk enterprise security maturity model.
  • Leveraging Splunk for critical compliance reporting and operational intelligence.

Protect your agency or organization from real-time threats with security configurations designed to support your business and mission. Working with our experts, you’ll be able to analyze, optimize, and enhance the use of security tools across your organization, so you can get the most out of your existing assets and licenses. We could also assist you to reprioritize, repurpose, or reconfigure your current products to help avoid any unnecessary acquisitions and make recommendations on how to make the best return of your investments.

Department of Defense (DoD) RMF Certification and Accreditation

The Department of Defense (DoD) Risk Management Framework (RMF) provides a set of standards that enable DoD agencies to effectively manage Cybersecurity risks and make more informed, risk-based decisions.

The six-step RMF process, developed by NIST, is designed to reduce the costs associated with DIACAP or other Authorization methods. Instead, the RMF creates a shared information security framework across the DoD, the DoD contractor community, or even civilian sectors.

If you are a DoD contractor, our DoD RMF certification and accreditation service can help you assess your information systems to DoD RMF standards in pursuit of a DoD Agency Authority to Operate (ATO). Using NIST 800-53 Revision 4 guidance, our RMF approach builds on the framework’s six steps (Categorize, Select, Implement, Assess, Authorize, Monitor) and capitalizes on our extensive experience delivering RMF services to the federal civilian sector.

We can help you to achieve the following objectives:

  • Deliver a unified view of cyber risk and vulnerabilities across your organization through risk-focused tools and procedures.
  • Measure the potential impact of risk-based decision-making on your mission.
  • Reduce time spent obtaining DoD and other federal agency authorizations with reciprocal acceptance.
  • Increase the likelihood of executing future projects on time and on budget by proactively building security into systems.
  • Enhance efficiency through information assurance control inheritance and reuse.

Why choose us (ACT) for your DoD RMF Certification and Assessment?

We understand your cybersecurity and DoD RMF compliance needs and take ownership of your projects to derive the most effective results. We can help you:

  • Transition your compliance program from DIACAP to the DoD RMF in an efficient manner
  • Tailor the RMF to your organization and align supporting functions to realize framework efficiencies.
  • Integrate the RMF with your System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and acquisition system activities.
  • Continuously monitor and assess your systems for near real-time decisions.

HIPAA Compliance, Privacy Impact Assessment, and Protocol Development Services

Healthcare organizations and their service providers must go beyond HIPAA compliance requirements. They need to implement advanced security technologies and sophisticated risk management practices to provide the level of data protection and risk reduction needed today.

ACT helps healthcare providers and business associates secure their environments and technologies to protect patient data throughout the patient care lifecycles.

Our compliance and risk assessment services are foundational to the regulatory requirements of the HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules. These services represent the basic level of compliance for organizations that create, receive, maintain, or transmit Protected Health Information (PHI). Whether your data resides on wearable, patient intake forms, medical devices, or in the cloud, we provide a secured approach for data protection that satisfies industry regulations with deep-dive, technical capabilities to improve your security posture. We also help business associates deliver the highest level of data protection for their healthcare customers that gives them a competitive edge and increases revenue.

Our services include:

  • HIPAA compliance is heavily focused on policies and procedures related to how organizations safeguard PHI. To address this need, we offer a customized solution that could help to expeditiously upgrade existing policies and procedures that align to all HIPAA Security and Breach Notification Rule requirements.
  • HIPAA Security Rule Gap and Compliance Assessments – ACT offers a gap assessment service that’s been scrupulously designed to unveil areas of non-compliance and heightened risk. Organizations looking to satisfy an audit or investigation by the OCR will benefit from ACT’s compliance assessment. This assessment looks beyond the design of a control by including detailed testing to ensure satisfactory safeguards have been defined, implemented, and are operating effectively. Both assessments are linked to the requirements of the HIPAA Security and Breach Notification Rules but are based on ACT’s custom-created approach that leverages the OCR Audit Protocol, industry frameworks (e.g., NIST 800-53), and personal experiences working with the OCR.
  • HIPAA Privacy Rule Assessment –Similar to services that address the HIPAA Security Rule, ACT offers assessments geared towards ensuring compliance with the HIPAA Privacy Rule. We assess an organization’s compliance posture through the design, implementation, and effectiveness of controls. For areas where gaps or deficiencies are noted, we provide detailed recommendations to assist with remediation and cost savings efforts.
  • Custom Training, Workshops, and Technical Advisory – We understand that each organization faces unique challenges, so we have healthcare experts on hand to assist with all HIPAA-related and research protocol support needs.

Why Choose ACT for your HIPAA needs?

We have a team of healthcare and cybersecurity experts who are passionate about cybersecurity and want more than ready-made compliance.

  • We assess hundreds of technology offerings in the healthcare arena – from medical devices and software to population health, revenue cycle management and telemedicine solutions. Our process provides a holistic view of security to achieve optimal, value-based patient outcomes.
  • ACT continually educates the industry about healthcare cybersecurity through event presentations, webinars, case studies and white papers.
  • We aid our valuable clients in Health Service sectors in carrying out their clinical research goals. We offer services that include but are not limited to: protocol development and execution, statistical analysis, and regulatory compliance.