Department of Defense contractors can achieve up to 30% of CMMC with the Blackhawk all-in-one Managed Detection & Response technology.  I’ll explain how momentarily, but first, here’s a little background on CMMC.

Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification

Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) was designed to provide increased assurance to the Department of Defense (DoD) that a company can adequately protect their computer systems and the sensitive data that it may contain.  Effective November 30, 2020, the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) requires that DoD contractors get a CMMC to pursue select contracts.

To be eligible to pursue future DoD contracts, contractors pursue certifications for Maturity Levels (ML) 1 through 5.  The ML they pursue depends upon the types of information they need to protect – Federal Contract Information (FCI) and Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) – and whether they face advanced persistent threats (APT).  To demonstrate their ML, companies must document CMMC practices relevant to their desired ML.  The Figure below shows the progressive MLs and the number of practices required for each ML.

If you are handling CUI as a part of your DoD contracts, you are required to get CMMC ML 3.  To get ML3, you must implement, document, and certify 130 CMMC cybersecurity practices.  While some practices are easy and inexpensive to implement, many of the practices are costly.  The CMMC documentation effort is pretty significant as well.  DoD contractors need to take every CMMC efficiency they can get.

How to Achieve Up to 30% of CMMC with the Blackhawk

The Blackhawk Analytic Platform™ (Blackhawk) is an all-in-one managed detection & response (MDR) appliance that includes:

1. cyber threat intelligence feed (aggregates over 30 individual feeds into one)
2. security information and event manager
3. packet capture and analysis
4. a utility that enables you to use threat signatures on historic packet capture (i.e., have I been affected by this zero day in recent months)
5. a hunt and eradication tool for end points
6. a next gen firewall and intrusion detection system
7. all integrated on a high-availability storage appliance

The Blackhawk architects are all incident response experts who formerly spent time working at the acclaimed Defense Cyber Crime Center pursuing some of the most sophisticated cyber criminals and nation states on Earth.  When they dream about an all-in-one MDR and incident response tool, the Blackhawk is what they see.

Even though the Blackhawk was created and is endorsed by MDR and incident response experts, that doesn’t mean the Blackhawk is easy to sell.  The value propositions of so many tools and features can be dizzying to our customers.  However, our all-in-one approach to MDR has a very clear value when it comes to CMMC.  Blackhawk-based MDR:

• Satisfies up to 30% of CMMC practices (51 out of 171 practices)
• Addresses 30 out of 130 practices required for Maturity Level 3
• Addresses over 50% of the practice required to get from Maturity Level 3 to Maturity Level 5

Individual product categories like audit log searching (LogRythym), endpoint detection & response (Microsoft ATP), and packet capture (SentryWire) don’t come anywhere close to 30%.

Can you assemble products and tools to recreate the full feature set of Blackhawk?  Absolutely, and we respect everyone who takes-on that challenge.  However, you will be very hard pressed to integrate all those components into an end-to-end functional solution.  Perhaps more importantly, the price of all those tools will be far beyond the price of a Blackhawk.

If you are figuring out your CMMC game plan, check out the Blackhawk and our associated MDR service.  If you want to achieve up to 30% of CMMC with the Blackhawk, just send us an e-mail at [email protected] to schedule some talk time or a demo.