Cloud 9 Advisers - News #complianceCloud 9 Advisers - News #compliancehttps://www.cloud9advisers.com/News/tag/complianceTue, 24 Feb 2026 08:38:29 -0800http://zoho.com/sites/<![CDATA[CMMC: 6 Key Takeaways]]>https://www.cloud9advisers.com/News/post/cmmc-6-key-takeawaysThe CMMC final rule is here, and it's full of surprises. Cut through the noise: learn the 6 counter-intuitive takeaways that change how you approach compliance, secure contracts, and manage your IT risk. It's time to stop stressing and start executing.]]>

What Everyone Gets Wrong About CMMC: 6 Key Takeaways from the Final Rule

What Everyone Gets Wrong About CMMC: 6 Key Takeaways from the Final Rule

The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) final rule is here, and it challenges everything the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) thought it knew about compliance, cost, and contract eligibility.

Unlocking clarity in the complex world of CMMC compliance.

The CMMC Final Rule: What You Thought You Knew Just Changed

For government contractors, the Department of Defense's Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program has been a source of complexity, cost, and considerable anxiety. Since its inception, the regulation has evolved, leaving many in the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) struggling to keep up with its requirements and implications. The goal is clear: to secure the DIB against evolving cybersecurity threats and protect sensitive government information.


Beneath the dense regulatory language of the final rule, however, are several surprising, counter-intuitive, and impactful realities that every business in the DIB needs to understand. These aren't minor details; they are fundamental aspects of the program that challenge common assumptions and have significant strategic implications for contract bidding, IT investment, and risk management.


This article distills the official CMMC rule documents into a clear, scannable list of the most critical takeaways. It cuts through the noise to reveal what the Pentagon’s new cybersecurity rules really say and what they mean for your business. Our goal is to give you clarity and confidence to make quick, informed decisions.


Takeaway 1: "Self-Attestation" Isn't Dead—It Just Evolved

A core motivation behind the original CMMC program was to move the DIB away from the "self-attestation" model of security that the DoD had previously relied on for NIST SP 800-171 compliance. The perception was that self-reporting wasn't effective enough, necessitating a shift toward third-party verification.


The surprising twist is that the revised CMMC Program (often called CMMC 2.0) streamlined the model and reintroduced self-assessments as a valid compliance pathway. The final rule confirms that companies at Level 1 and a subset of companies at Level 2 are allowed to demonstrate compliance through annual self-assessments rather than a mandatory third-party audit.


This is a significant and pragmatic change that alleviates the immediate, immense cost and logistical burden a universal audit requirement would have placed on the DIB, especially on small businesses. This evolution represents a calculated, risk-based decision by the DoD, which has determined that for contracts involving less sensitive information, the risk of unverified compliance is acceptable when weighed against the practical realities and costs imposed on the defense industrial marketplace.


Takeaway 2: Perfection Isn't Required to Win a Contract

A common misconception about CMMC is that a contractor must have a perfect cybersecurity assessment score to be eligible for a contract award. This assumption has been a major source of stress for companies working toward compliance, as achieving 100% implementation of all security controls is a formidable task.


The final rule clarifies that this is not the case. An organization can be awarded a contract by achieving a "Conditional Level 2" or "Conditional Level 3" CMMC status. To qualify, a company must achieve a minimum score equal to 80% of the maximum score on a CMMC Level 2 or Level 3 assessment. All unmet requirements must be documented in a Plan of Action and Milestones (POA&M).


Critically, the organization has a 180-day deadline from the date of the conditional assessment to close out the POA&M and meet all remaining requirements. This is a significant and practical concession from the DoD, allowing companies to win business while still finalizing their compliance efforts.


Takeaway 3: The Government Won't Tell You Exactly What to Protect

One of the most persistent areas of confusion for contractors is determining what information, exactly, constitutes Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). Many have asked the government for clearer definitions, guidance, and contract-specific lists to help define the scope of their CMMC efforts.


The counter-intuitive reality is that the DoD has officially stated this is outside the scope of the CMMC rule, placing the primary responsibility for identifying CUI squarely on the contractor. The rule's commentary includes a direct and unambiguous response to industry requests for guidance:


The CMMC Program will not provide CUI guidance materials to industry as it is outside the scope of this CMMC rule.


The document further clarifies that official DoD policy states, "The authorized holder of a document or material is responsible for determining, at the time of creation, whether information in a document or material falls into a CUI category." This places a significant burden on contractors, who must become experts in data classification to accurately define the scope of their own CMMC assessments.


Takeaway 4: The Biggest Costs of CMMC Aren't Considered "CMMC Costs"

The high cost of CMMC compliance is a major concern across the DIB. However, the DoD's official position on what constitutes a "CMMC cost" may come as a surprise. The costs to implement the required security controls for Level 1 (from FAR 52.204-21) and Level 2 (from NIST SP 800-171) are not considered costs attributable to the CMMC rule.


The government's rationale is that these implementation requirements were mandated years earlier, with a deadline to implement the NIST SP 800-171 controls set back in December 2017. Therefore, from the DoD's perspective, companies should have already incurred these implementation costs. The only new costs officially attributed to CMMC Levels 1 and 2 are for the assessment and affirmation activities required to verify that those pre-existing requirements have been met. The DoD reinforces its perspective on the necessity of these costs with a powerful statement:


The cost of lost technological advantage over potential adversaries is greater than the costs of such enforcement.


Takeaway 5: Your Cloud Provider Is Part of Your Audit

A company’s CMMC compliance boundary does not end with its own on-premises servers and workstations. If an organization uses an external Cloud Service Provider (CSP) to process, store, or transmit CUI, that CSP is unequivocally part of the CMMC assessment scope.


The final rule specifies a clear and impactful requirement for these providers: the CSP must meet the FedRAMP Moderate baseline or an equivalent standard. The rule documents are explicit on this point, stating the following:


...the DoD is not willing to assume all the risk of non-FedRAMP Moderate Equivalent CSOs when the CSO is used to process, store, or transmit CUI.


This effectively makes vendor selection a compliance decision, not just an IT one. The contractor is ultimately responsible for ensuring its entire CUI data chain—including services provided by third parties—meets DoD's stringent security standards.


Takeaway 6: The "COTS Exception" Is Narrower Than You Think

The CMMC rule provides a well-known exemption for contracts that are solely for the acquisition of Commercially Available Off-the-Shelf (COTS) items. This has led some to believe that if they sell COTS products, they are exempt from CMMC entirely.


However, there is a critical and surprising nuance in this rule. The source text clarifies: "The exemption does not apply to a contractor's use of COTS products within its information systems that process, store, or transmit CUI."


A simple example illustrates this crucial distinction:

  • A company whose contract is solely to sell COTS laptops directly to the DoD might be exempt from CMMC for that specific contract.

  • However, if that same company uses those same COTS laptops in its own corporate network to perform work on a different DoD contract that involves CUI, then its network is subject to CMMC requirements.


The exemption applies to what is being sold, not to what is being used to perform contract work involving sensitive data. This is a crucial detail that could easily lead to a failed assessment if misinterpreted.


Conclusion: A New Era of Accountability and Pragmatism

The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program represents a fundamental shift in the DoD's approach to securing its supply chain. It moves the DIB from a model based on trust and self-attestation to one centered on verification and accountability. Yet, as these takeaways reveal, the final rule is not a rigid, one-size-fits-all mandate. It includes pragmatic allowances—such as self-assessments and conditional certifications—that acknowledge the business realities faced by the thousands of companies that support the U.S. warfighter.


The rules are now set, and the phased implementation is underway. With this new era of accountability beginning, the true test now begins: will this landmark regulation successfully raise the DIB's security baseline to protect against advanced threats, or will it create unforeseen obstacles for the very innovators the DoD relies on? The path forward requires clarity, and recognizing these six realities is the first step toward confident compliance.

3rd-Party Assessments
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]]>Mon, 20 Oct 2025 09:49:47 -0500<![CDATA[The (Data) Constitution]]>https://www.cloud9advisers.com/News/post/the-data-constitutionExplore why robust data governance is essential for ethical, compliant, and effective AI deployment in mid-sized organizations, covering regulatory and ethical considerations.]]>

Governing Your AI's Future

Robust data governance is essential for ethical, compliant, and effective AI deployments in organizations, covering regulatory and ethical considerations.

In our journey through AI data readiness, we've explored how data is the true magic behind Artificial Intelligence and why its quality is paramount. Now, it's time to delve into the foundational framework that underpins both: Data Governance. Think of data governance as the "constitution" for your organization's data – a living document of policies, principles, and procedures that dictate how data is collected, stored, used, and protected. Without this robust constitution, your AI initiatives, no matter how innovative, risk operating in a chaotic, non-compliant, and ultimately unsustainable environment. For mid-sized organizations navigating the complex currents of AI adoption, establishing sound data governance isn't just a best practice; it's a strategic imperative for building a trustworthy and resilient AI-powered future.

The promise of AI is immense, offering mid-sized businesses the agility and insights once exclusive to larger enterprises. However, the rapid pace of AI adoption often outstrips the foundational work required to manage the data that fuels it. This is where data governance steps in – not as a bureaucratic hurdle, but as the essential blueprint for order, ethics, and compliance in your AI ecosystem. It's the difference between a well-ordered society and a free-for-all.

Data governance refers to the overarching policies and procedures that determine an organization's overall data readiness. It's about establishing clear accountability and processes for managing data assets, ensuring they are available, usable, secure, and compliant throughout their lifecycle. For AI, this means ensuring the data fed into models is not only high-quality but also ethically sourced, legally permissible, and consistently managed.

Core Components of Your Data Constitution

A robust data governance framework is built upon several interconnected pillars, each vital for supporting effective AI deployment:

1. The Rulebook

Policies and Standards: These are the defined guidelines for how data is handled across the organization. They cover everything from data entry protocols to data retention schedules. For AI, clear policies ensure consistency in data collection, labeling, and usage, which directly impacts model accuracy and reliability. Standards dictate formats, definitions, and quality benchmarks, ensuring that data from disparate sources can be harmonized for AI consumption.

2. Navigating the Legal and Moral Landscape

Regulatory & Ethical Considerations: This is perhaps the most complex and rapidly evolving aspect of data governance for AI. The global regulatory landscape for data privacy is a labyrinth, with over 144 countries now having national data privacy laws. For mid-sized firms operating internationally or handling diverse customer data, navigating this patchwork of regulations is critical.

  • Data Privacy Laws: Beyond the well-known GDPR in Europe, the U.S. has a growing number of state-specific laws (e.g., California's CCPA, Virginia's CDPA, Colorado's CPA, Utah's UCPA, Texas's TDPSA), each with nuances regarding consumer data rights, consent, and data processing. AI initiatives must be designed with these laws in mind, particularly concerning how personal or sensitive data is used for training and inference.

  • The EU AI Act: This landmark legislation, currently rolling out in phases, specifically regulates how businesses use AI, categorizing AI systems by risk level and imposing stringent requirements on high-risk applications. For any mid-sized company engaging with EU citizens or operating in the EU, understanding and adhering to this act is paramount for AI deployment. As already seen with State-level data privacy laws, it's likely that similar AI-specific legislation will come to the US, likely starting at the state level before potentially making it’s way into federal regulations.

  • Ethical AI Principles: Beyond legal compliance, ethical considerations are gaining increasing prominence. Organizations must proactively address:

    • Fairness: Ensuring AI models are trained and developed to avoid bias. This requires diverse datasets and continuous monitoring for algorithmic fairness, preventing discriminatory outcomes.

    • Accountability: Establishing clear audit trails and logs to track AI decision-making. AI systems should have built-in processes for human oversight and mechanisms for addressing errors or unintended consequences. Who is responsible when an autonomous system makes a critical decision? Governance provides the answer.

    • Transparency: Moving towards "explainable AI" (XAI) processes to understand the reasoning behind AI outputs and actions. This builds trust and allows for debugging and improvement.

Privacy and Consent Management: Ensuring AI systems respect individual privacy rights. This includes limiting data collection, anonymization techniques, and providing clear mechanisms for individuals to control their data, especially crucial when dealing with sensitive information.

3.  Protecting Your Crown Jewels

Confidentiality (Encryption): Data governance mandates robust security measures to protect sensitive information from unauthorized access, breaches, and cyber threats. For AI, this means encrypting data at rest and in transit, especially when it's being used for model training or inference. Confidentiality protocols ensure that even if a system is compromised, the underlying data remains protected.

4.  Knowing Who's Who

Authentication protocols verify the identity of users or systems attempting to access data. Strong authentication mechanisms, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), are critical for preventing unauthorized access to data repositories that feed AI models. Without proper authentication, even the most secure data can be vulnerable.

5. Authorization: Defining Access Rights

Authorization determines what specific actions an authenticated user or system can perform on particular data assets. This involves implementing granular access controls, ensuring that AI models or human users only have access to the data necessary for their specific function. This minimizes the risk of data misuse or accidental exposure, especially important when dealing with diverse datasets for different AI applications.

Challenges for Small and Mid-Sized Organizations:

Building and maintaining such a Data Constitution on a lean budget can seem impossible. While the necessity of data governance is clear, small and mid-sized organizations often face unique hurdles in its implementation:

  • Lack of Operational Oversight: Many executives may claim to have AI governance frameworks, but the reality often falls short on operational implementation and continuous review. Lean IT teams might lack the dedicated staff to manage and enforce complex governance policies.

  • Limited Legal/Compliance Resources: Unlike large enterprises with dedicated legal and compliance departments, mid-sized firms may struggle to keep pace with the rapidly evolving regulatory landscape for data and AI.

  • Difficulty in Implementing Comprehensive Frameworks: Building a holistic data governance framework from scratch can seem overwhelming with limited resources and competing priorities. The temptation to focus solely on immediate AI deployment, rather than foundational governance, is strong.

However, these challenges are not insurmountable. The key is a pragmatic, phased approach. Start by identifying the most critical data assets and AI use cases, then build governance around them. Leverage technology solutions that specialize in automating aspects of data discovery, quality, and access control. Partnering with external service provider experts can bridge resource gaps and provide specialized knowledge.

Data Governance – The Strategic Enabler

Data governance is far more than a compliance checklist; it is the strategic enabler for building trustworthy, compliant, and high-performing AI systems. It mitigates risks, fosters innovation by providing reliable data, and builds confidence in your AI initiatives. For mid-sized organizations, embracing data governance means laying a solid, ethical, and legally sound foundation for your AI-powered future. It ensures that your AI "magic" is not only dazzling but also responsible, sustainable, and truly transformative.

Read more about the importance of Data Readiness in AI: 


    The AI Magic Trick: Why Your Data is the Real Star of the Show


    The Unseen Imperfection: Why Data Quality Makes or Breaks Your AI


Schedule a phone call
]]>Wed, 13 Aug 2025 13:01:00 -0500<![CDATA[Supplier Spotlight: Allgress]]>https://www.cloud9advisers.com/News/post/supplier-spotlight-Allgress

Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance (GRC)

from Thinkstock

by: Allgress

Cloud 9 Supplier Spotlight:  Allgress

RISK EXCEPTION

Track Risk – Evaluate and communicate strategic risks that align to your organizations enterprise risk program


Document and track risk exceptions with full life-cycle management by providing a standardized approach for the review, management, and acceptance of Findings and Exceptions


THIRD PARTY VENDOR MANAGEMENT

Oversee – Establish due diligence and ongoing monitoring of third party’s activities and performance


Gain visibility into your vendor’s risk posture and compliance to make informed decisions about the business relationship of your contracted vendors


COMPLIANCE MANAGEMENT
Assess Risk Efficiently – Assess risks against industry standards and regulatory requirements, provide gap analysis, risk treatment and reporting

RISK MANAGEMENT
Communicate Strategically with Key Stakeholders – Track strategic risks, assign ownership across the enterprise, quickly and easily communicate risk posture through dashboards, and provide continuous monitoring and improvement of risk posture of the organization

POLICY MANAGEMENT
Stay Organized – Unify and disseminate your organization’s document library from a centralized platform

Quickly assess your gaps in policy, mange your document lifecycle and exceptions

INCIDENT RESPONSE
Investigate & Mobilize – Track and respond to security threats impacting your company’s critical infrastructure with centralized management, root cause analysis, reporting, and tracking

VULNERABILITY MANAGEMENT
Collect, analyze and visualize data in the way you need to see it so you can make key decisions that align security and regulatory compliance programs with top business priorities. Manage patch exceptions, and understand the impact of your organizations exposure of unpatched assets
Leverage AWS API’s to Automate Compliance.


Allgress ComplianceVision (CV): Organizations are faced with the task of providing assurance that high-rated risk factors are being managed with the appropriate controls in place and that those controls are operating effectively. With increases in the regulatory regime, increasing technology complexity and pressures on cost, the demand is high for productivity improvements in the performance evaluation of internal controls. Allgress ComplianceVision (CV) provides continuous monitoring of control operating effectiveness. CV provides continuous data assurance to verify the integrity of data flowing through systems, as well as continuous risk monitoring and assessment to dynamically measure your organization’s risk.


Allgress CV improves control management and monitoring while reducing the time sink and complexity of traditionally annual, detailed controls assessments. Organizations are able to leverage API’s from Amazon Web Services (AWS) as well as AWS Technology Partners, enabling a continuous compliance process.  In addition, policies in configuration content are included for all major compliance frameworks.  With Allgress CV organizations realize cost reductions through improved efficiency and effectiveness, and additionally benefit from increased test coverage, improved timeliness of testing, reduced risk velocity and remediation cost, improved consistency, the ability to identify trends, and comprehensive risk visibility through the Allgress Platform. Allgress CV replaces the manual, error-prone, preventive controls of the past with automated, detective controls to reduce your risk profile.


CV identifies the shared, inherited, and customer specific control statements and demonstrates how you can leverage the AWS Shared Responsibility model to document adherence with applicable compliance standards. Focusing on all major compliance frameworks such as PCI, HIPAA, CJIS, NIST, and FISMA compliance, the portal guides you through the compliance process by providing targeted content at every step of the way. ComplianceVision automates manual compliance functions through integration with current AWS tools.


ComplianceVision will soon support all major cloud platforms, including Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Oracle Cloud Platform.

About Allgress

Founded in 2008, Allgress helps enterprise security and risk professionals solve the problem of how to assess, understand and manage corporate risk.

Its founders and management team are committed to providing CISOs with the ability to make effective investment decisions that align security and compliance programs with top business priorities, communicate the value of those decisions to senior executives, and manage risk, fines, and brand damage.

Allgress Business Risk Intelligence solutions converge disparate risk silos across global enterprise networks and automate governance, risk and compliance (IT GRC) management processes. Powered by the patented Allgress Business Risk Intelligence engine, the company's products, solutions and CISO reporting tools provide customers with heat maps and compliance assessment reports that reveal a comprehensive, immediate and intuitive picture of their organizations' security and compliance risk posture.

Allgress provides operational efficiency. Its solutions allow users to assess once and manage and report on many industry and government regulations. Allgress deploys faster than competing solutions and provides rapid ROI.
Is Allgress right for you?

Contact Cloud 9 to see if Allgress is right for your business. Cloud 9 Advisers is vendor agnostic and can help you find the right solutions and the right companies from our list of over 200 vendors in our curated Supplier Portfolio. 


CyberSecurity  Communications  Connectivity  Cloud

Learn more about Cloud 9
]]>Wed, 05 Feb 2020 18:19:35 -0500<![CDATA[Supplier Spotlight: Nitel]]>https://www.cloud9advisers.com/News/post/supplier-spotlight-Nitel

Nitel: Managed Next-Generation Security

By: Nitel USA, see the article here https://www.nitelusa.com/blog/explore-4-levels-of-security-testing/

Cloud 9 Supplier Spotlight:  NITEL

Explore Four Levels of Security Testing

With cloud, big data and mobile solutions becoming mission-critical to organizations of all sizes, IT teams are struggling to keep up with the adoption and innovation of the latest security best practices, leaving their organizations vulnerable to cybercriminals. And it’s not just large organizations cybercriminals are targeting; smaller companies are just as likely to be attacked. They tend to be easier targets, more likely to pay up in the case of a ransomware attack. They can also serve as a back door into other third-party organizations they do business with.


Although managed security is an investment, many organizations simply cannot afford to not conduct on-going security testing. According to a recent Trustwave security report, 41% of those surveyed feared financial damage to their company in the event of a cyberattack or data breach.


Managed security testing is defined as subscription-based proactive scanning and testing of environment security to identify vulnerabilities. However, a comprehensive managed security solution does more than identify vulnerabilities and weak points.


When working with a qualified managed security provider an organization should not only gain insight into weaknesses, but gain a blueprint on how to prioritize, mitigate and remediate these risks. When your customer engages with a provider of managed security services like Nitel, backed by a cybersecurity Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader Trustwave, they can choose to engage with four levels of testing depending on their budget and business needs, including:
    • Basic threat – Simulates the most common attacks executed in the wild today. This class of attacker typically uses freely-available, automated attack tools.
    • Opportunistic threat – Builds upon the basic threat and simulates an opportunistic attack executed by a skilled attacker that does not spend an extensive amount of time executing highly sophisticated attacks. This type of attacker seeks easy targets (”low-hanging fruit”) and will use a mix of automated tools and manual exploitation to penetrate their targets.
    • Targeted threat – Simulates a targeted attack executed by a skilled, patient attacker that has targeted a specific organization. This class of attacker will expend significant resources and effort trying to compromise an organization’s systems.
    • Advanced threat – Simulates an advanced attack executed by a highly motivated, well-funded and extremely sophisticated attacker who will exhaust all options for compromise before relenting.
Cloud 9 Advisers clientele benefit from Nitel/Trustwave’s crowd-sourced, global threat intelligence through a solution that is scoped to fit their needs. Nitel's intrinsic network knowledge, combined with Trustwave’s highly skilled SpiderLab ethical hacker team, can quickly identify security weak points and guide you to a solution to protect your organization.

Managed Next-Gen Security Solutions

What keps business and IT leaders up at night?
For business leaders everywhere, a data breach is on par with the most damaging things that could happen to an organization. The thought of being the next company to make headlines keeps leaders up at night while IT organizations fight to keep the bad guys out. As threats become increasingly widespread, sophisticated and dangerous, companies look to develop security strategies that protect their environment while staying within budgets that seem to get tighter every year.

Your business is unique, with its own set of needs and priorities. That’s why we offer a suite of security solutions that offers multiple ways for you to protect your business. Whether your business is big or small, whether you value distributed architecture or centralized, you’ll find a solution that fits how you prefer to manage your environment.

ENTERPRISE GRADE PROTECTION

  • Safely enable applications, users and content by classifying all traffic, determining the business use case, and assigning policies to allow and protect access to relevant applications.
  • Prevent threats by eliminating unwanted applications to reduce your threat footprint and apply targeted security policies to block known vulnerability exploits, viruses, spyware, botnets and unknown malware (APTs).
  • Protect your datacenters through the validation of applications, isolation of data, control over rogue applications and high-speed threat prevention.
  • Secure public and private cloud computing environments with increased visibility and control; deploy, enforce and maintain security policies at the same pace as your virtual machines.
  • Embrace safe mobile computing by extending the enterprise security platform to users and devices no matter where they are located.

ROCK SOLID PROTECTION FOR SMB

Our customized solutions deliver next-generation security for every size and type of business. Gain full control and visibility of application traffic passing through your network, even for encrypted traffic, thanks to application detection, user-identity awareness, SSL interception and built-in live reporting.


You benefit from the same critical next-generation security features that large enterprises receive—but sized appropriately for your business. Your business will fend off threats with included next-gen features that take place directly in the data path, including:
  • Firewalling
  • Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDS/IPS)
  • URL Filtering
  • Dual Antivirus
  • Application Control
SECURITY EXPERTISE ON YOUR SIDE

Nitel has partnered with Gartner Magic Quadrant leader Trustwave to complement our managed next-generation firewall service with a suite of security management services. This 1–2 punch creates a comprehensive managed security solution to reduce your business risk and give you peace of mind. With Nitel overseeing your network health, performance and security, you have a single partner working on your behalf to ensure your business operates optimally and safely.

SECURITY INFORMATIONEVENT MANAGEMENT

Achieve more effective identification and mitigation of security threats. You’ll reduce your burden with around-the-clock support from 10 global security operations centers staffed with experts who have in-depth knowledge and experience working with complex network environments for highly distributed organizations.


Our SIEM service collects, analyzes and stores logs from networks, hosts and critical applications. It extends visibility beyond the network perimeter to the application layer, helping you achieve more effective identification and mitigation of security threats, and compliance validation with numerous regulatory and industry standards.


Advantages:
  • SpiderLabs security research utilizing global event data to identify current and emerging threats
  • Industry-leading compliance expertise
  • Solutions tailored to the specific needs of healthcare, financial, retail and more
  • Collects and reviews over 1 billion events per day

Need to maintain compliance with PCI, DDS, HIPAA, SOX, FISMA, GLBA/FFIEC? Let Nitel help. We’ll help you fulfill your requirements for vulnerability scanning, penetration testing and ongoing evaluation of your environments and applications.

MANAGED SECURITY TESTING

Reveal potential vulnerabilities in your environment with thorough penetration testing. Expert “ethical hackers,” armed with the same techniques as today’s cybercriminals, attempt to hack into your network or application to help you identify network-connected assets, learn how those assets are vulnerable to attack and understand what could happen if those assets were compromised.

Learn More

Contact Cloud 9 Advisers for expert guidance and help with any compliance, risk management, monitoring, edge security and any other cybersecurity issues. We'll guide you to the right vendors, like Nitel, from our Supplier Portfolio. 

Your Agent.  Your Advocate. Your Adviser.


Because it’s all about you. 


Cloud 9 Advisers will save you time during the often exhausting process of finding, evaluating, and selecting new technologies and competitive providers. We become an extension of your team and help manage the entire bidding and procurement process. We will save you money by using the buying power of thousands of other clients through our curated Supplier Portfolio, and finding the right companies from our portfolio to bid on your requirements. We provide you clarity by distilling all the information from each bidder, and clear the clutter so you can make the right decision on the best solution and provider. Cloud 9 gives you confidence throughout the decision-making process by continually evaluating the bidders and negotiating the best price and terms, so you can focus on what you do best. 


Technology Partners. Strategic Advisers.


Contact Cloud 9
]]>Tue, 04 Feb 2020 12:06:38 -0500<![CDATA[3 Reasons for Hybrid Cloud]]>https://www.cloud9advisers.com/News/post/3-reasons-for-hybrid-cloud

Top Three Strategic Reasons Why Hybrid Cloud is the Pragmatic Choice

Hybrid infrastructure is the ultimate custom-fit solution, allowing businesses to maximize flexibility, reduce major operational costs, and align their IT resources with strategic business goals.

UPDATED!

Top Three Strategic Reasons Why Hybrid Cloud is the Pragmatic Choice

Businesses are adopting cloud technologies at an unprecedented speed, transforming how they handle communications, applications, backups, and compute. Yet, despite the market drive toward "all-in" cloud solutions, the reality for most B2B organizations is a balanced, measured approach.


The vast majority of companies today operate with a hybrid infrastructure: they use the public cloud for certain applications, a private cloud for others, while retaining physical or colocation infrastructure for specialized or legacy workloads.


This is not a sign of hesitation; it is a sign of pragmatism. A custom-fit hybrid approach is often the most strategic way to ensure resources across the entire enterprise are supported fully, ensuring optimal performance and maximum cost efficiency.


Here are the top three strategic reasons businesses are consciously choosing the hybrid route.


1. Increase Flexibility and Regulatory Agility

The core benefit of hybrid cloud lies in its unparalleled flexibility—it combines the best attributes of different environments to meet diverse and often conflicting needs. A single architecture cannot successfully satisfy all requirements across a large enterprise, which may include regulatory demands, multiple complex applications, varying data storage needs, and aggressive development cycles.


Beyond the Single Platform Trap

A critical mistake in cloud strategy is adhering to a one-size-fits-all model. Hybrid cloud allows an organization to place each application or workload on the platform best suited for it.

  • Application Placement: Mission-critical systems requiring dedicated resources, predictable latency, or the power of bare metal can reside in a Private Cloud or dedicated Colocation. Meanwhile, highly scalable or variable workloads—like development, testing, and seasonal e-commerce traffic—can burst into the Public Cloud, leveraging its on-demand resources without over-provisioning private infrastructure. This flexibility is key to meeting fluctuating business demands without massive, unpredictable capital outlay.

  • The Power of Policy-Driven Placement: True hybrid flexibility is less about where the resource is and more about the policy that dictates its location. By establishing clear policies based on criteria like data sensitivity, performance requirements, and cost-per-hour, B2B leaders can build an infrastructure that dynamically optimizes itself. This requires a vendor-neutral, overarching strategy that treats all infrastructure—public, private, and on-premise—as a single resource pool.


Navigating Compliance and Data Sovereignty

For industries like finance (FINRA, PCI), healthcare (HIPAA), or government, strict data sovereignty and compliance rules often preclude using a multi-tenant public cloud for certain sensitive data sets. A hybrid strategy ensures compliance by creating necessary walls of isolation.

  • Regulatory Isolation: A dedicated Private Cloud environment or secure Colocation facility can host data that must remain within strict geographic or regulatory boundaries. The private element of the hybrid system acts as a high-security vault, ensuring compliance by restricting access to a single organization.

  • Accessing Agility Without Compromise: This doesn't mean sacrificing the agility of the public cloud. The hybrid model allows the processing of non-sensitive data, development environments, and front-end user applications to utilize public cloud resources, while the sensitive, regulated data store remains secure in the private environment. This balanced approach provides regulatory peace of mind without creating a development bottleneck.


Strategic Staggered Migration

For organizations with existing physical infrastructure, a hybrid approach allows them to stagger their migration. They can immediately leverage cloud benefits for low-hanging fruit (like disaster recovery or collaboration tools) while methodically planning the virtualization of complex legacy systems. This achieves consolidation goals on the company’s terms, not a vendor’s rushed deadline. The ability to use existing hardware until its natural end-of-life significantly reduces premature asset write-offs and ensures a more financially sound transition.


2. Reduce Costs Through Strategic Optimization

The assumption that "cloud is always cheaper" has been proven false for many businesses. Hybrid cloud allows businesses to realize genuine cost savings by providing intelligent controls over the most expensive aspect of public cloud consumption: data egress fees, and by optimizing resource allocation.


The Egress Fee Burden and Mitigation

Data egress is the cost charged by hyperscale providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) to move data out of their cloud environment. For businesses engaging in data analytics, replication for disaster recovery, or moving data between clouds, these fees can quickly accumulate, turning what seemed like a cost-saving strategy into a budgetary liability.

  • Mitigating Egress Fees is Crucial: This is arguably the most financially compelling reason for a hybrid approach. By positioning a dedicated hybrid cloud aggregator or using a smart interconnection strategy, businesses can significantly reduce the connectivity needed directly to hyperscale providers. By processing data closer to its destination or using proprietary private connections, this strategic placement can result in cutting AWS, Azure, GCP, and IBM egress fees by up to 66%—a massive, immediate saving for any data-intensive organization.

  • Avoiding Repurchase Costs (The Retain Strategy): As discussed in the "6 R's" migration strategy, some applications should simply be retained. A hybrid strategy validates this decision. By keeping certain legacy, low-changing applications on existing or managed dedicated infrastructure, the business avoids the massive cost of rewriting (Refactoring) or porting (Rehosting) them to a hyperscale environment where the cost of operation might exceed the cost of maintenance.


Strategic Financial Discipline: OpEx vs. CapEx

Hybrid architecture promotes financial discipline by ensuring resources are always optimized and aligned with the OpEx model.

  • Right-Sizing the Environment: You limit data transfer fees, control resource and storage costs precisely, and avoid the public cloud trap of over-provisioning resources just to be safe. By paying for precisely what is used, and nothing more, you maximize every infrastructure investment.

  • Predictable Operational Expenditure (OpEx): While Public Cloud is consumption-based, Private Cloud components of a hybrid environment often operate on a subscription-based OpEx model. This combines the budget predictability required by finance departments with the agility needed by IT, allowing for easier, more reliable quarterly and annual forecasting than relying purely on volatile, consumption-based public cloud metrics.


3. Improve Efficiency and Align Resources with Strategy

For many companies, highly skilled and highly compensated IT professionals are spending an excessive amount of time on the care and feeding of physical infrastructure—tasks that do not advance the core business mission. This is the definition of IT fatigue, and it directly impacts a company's ability to innovate.


Freeing IT to Focus on Business Value

Migrating appropriate workloads to a hosted datacenter or cloud environment helps to strategically free those resources, allowing them to shift their focus to helping advance strategic business initiatives.

  • Focus on Innovation: When the infrastructure is managed, maintained, and scaled by the cloud provider, the internal IT team is freed to focus on application optimization, security strategy, and business intelligence. They stop reacting to server alerts and start contributing to growth, competitive advantage, and business-facing projects. This directly translates infrastructure efficiency into business value.

  • The TCO of IT Fatigue: The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculation for on-premise hardware often fails to account for the true cost of time spent by highly paid engineers on maintenance tasks like patching, cooling, and power management. Shifting these tasks to a hybrid provider dramatically reduces this shadow cost.


Elastic Adaptability and Future-Proofing

The hybrid model ensures the infrastructure solution is fluid and adaptable, essential in a rapidly changing B2B environment.

  • Dynamic Workload Shifting: A flexible, scalable hybrid infrastructure solution ensures that as workloads shift (due to consolidation, acquisition, or a new product launch), the underlying infrastructure adapts dynamically. The business avoids being locked into static, rigid systems.

  • Optimal Resource Placement: The ultimate efficiency gain is tailoring your infrastructure so that every application or workload is supported by the platform best suited for it, rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all approach. This keeps the business on target to reach its goals by prioritizing performance and financial governance simultaneously. Furthermore, a hybrid approach allows a business to strategically use emerging technologies—such as edge computing or serverless functions—wherever they make the most sense, integrating them seamlessly with existing private core systems.


Finding the Right Mix in a Complex Landscape

Adopting a hybrid strategy is the smart move, but executing it flawlessly requires navigating a diverse and often confusing landscape of cloud aggregators, interconnection providers, colocation facilities, private cloud managers, and managed services firms.


The right hybrid approach isn't something you buy off the shelf; it's a strategic architecture you build to meet your specific needs. That complexity—the sheer number of vendors, contracts, and technical specifications—is precisely where impartial, vendor-neutral expertise becomes invaluable.


We partner only with our clients, operating solely as an expert resource to find the perfect mix of solutions and the best providers to deliver them. Our only objective is to ensure we are bringing the right companies from our Supplier Portfolio to help you achieve your goals and objectives.


Technology. Driven. Outcomes.


Next Step

If you are currently evaluating how to combine your existing infrastructure with modern cloud services to gain better financial and operational control, the next step is to formalize your hybrid strategy, making specific decisions about application placement and vendor selection.


If you are ready to identify and evaluate the portfolio of companies needed to establish the most effective custom-fit hybrid approach for your business, get in touch to explore your options.



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]]>Tue, 18 Jun 2019 12:33:14 -0500<![CDATA[CyberSecurity Basics]]>https://www.cloud9advisers.com/News/post/cybersecurity-basics

The Basics of Cyber Security, What every business should do

The following is a quick, simple list of must-dos to help businesses of all sizes protect themselves against cyber threats. 

  • Vulnerability Scanning

    • Doesn’t actually fix anything, but...

    • Shows “bad spots’”

    • Good services will show a plan of remediation

    • If subject to compliance (HIPPA, PCI, etc) recurring V.Scans are required

    • Do it at least  annually, quarterly is common for many businesses, monthly “managed” services best, but more costly

Think of it as a home inspection.

  • Penetration Testing

    • Different than a V.Scan but related

    • Considered “white-hat” or “ethical” hacking

    • Attempts to actually hack into your network

    • Should come after a V.Scan and initial remediations steps to test efficacy

    • Most Pen Tests will deliver a detailed, lengthy report of findings and remediation suggestions

    • Usually done annually. Should at least be done every couple/few years.

  • Endpoint Security

    • Mobile Security;

      • increasingly important and often overlooked window in to the network

      • proprietary and cloud apps.

      • corporate or employee owned mobile devices (BYOD)

    • Anti-Virus

    • Firewall, go with a Next Gen FW (NGFW). Best would be a managed Firewall solution. Depending on your situation also look into a cloud firewall solution. 

  • Employee Education

    • Email phishing; train employees to recognize bad, phishing emails by using mock emails


Contact us at Cloud 9 Advisers. We are impartial, independent, and provider-neutral, consultants of Communications, Collaboration, Connectivity, and Cloud technologies. We guide our clients through the morass of options, solutions, and providers. Sign up for our Consulting & Buying Program and get the real story on CyberSecurity and the best methodology for your business.Find out who the best providers are and who to avoid. Get real-world advice, recommendations, and unbiased solution design. 


Through the Program, you’ll have access to our distributor team of provider-neutral SME-Subject Matter Experts and Services Engineers. We’ll help you get pricing and bids from multiple, competing companies through our distributor portfolio of nearly 200 vetted and approved service providers. Use our evaluation tools to show decision makers the entire process, reasoning, and recommendations and complete due diligence for the project. We’ll help manage the entire procurement process (and keep all those pesky sales-guys off your back!). Visit www.Cloud9Advisers.com for more information

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]]>Sat, 29 Sep 2018 12:27:49 -0500<![CDATA[Cyber Security - What is the cost?]]>https://www.cloud9advisers.com/News/post/cyber-security-what-is-the-costwhat is the real cost of a cybersecurity breach? Are you too small to worry about these things? Are you willing to bet your business on your Firewall and the IT group managing it?]]>
The costs associated with security breaches are going up, jumping 29 percent in recent years to more than $4 million per incident, according to Ponemon’s annual bench marking report. In addition, when it comes to the impacts of breaches – such as cost per record lost – Ponemon says the gap is widening between organizations that are unprepared and those that have added policies and processes like incident response plans, encryption, and employee training.


To calculate the average cost of a data breach, Ponemon collects both the direct and indirect expenses as well as opportunity costs incurred by the organization as follows:
  • Direct cost – the direct expense outlay to accomplish a given activity, such as engaging forensic experts, outsourcing hotline support and providing free credit monitoring subscriptions and discounts for future products and services.
  • Indirect cost – the amount of time, effort and other organizational resources spent in the aftermath of a breach, such as in-house investigations and communications. This category also includes the extrapolated value of customer loss resulting from turnover.
  • Opportunity cost – the cost of lost business opportunities resulting from negative reputation effects after the breach has been reported to victims and publicly revealed to the media.

A recent report from Deloitte says the costs of a cybersecurity breach could be higher than most data shows as the costs can rack up for many years after the initial incident. The firm identified 14 cyberattack impact factors, including seven it claims are hiding beneath the surface and account for 95 percent of the financial impact. (see chart below).

Small business owners need to take caution as well. One may think; "I'm too small to be a target". Security by obscurity is not a good policy. One may think: "I've got a firewall and a good IT company". Are you willing to bet your business on that? Cyber Security is a specialized field and many "generalist" IT and MSP organizations today simply do not have the expertise needed to properly and adequately protect your hard earned investment and customers. There are numerous cost-effective, methods, practices, and managed services that will significantly reduce your exposure and augment what your IT company is already doing.


Contact us at Cloud 9 Advisers to learn about better ways to protect your business. Through our Consulting & Buying Program, our consulting services are free to you. We are provider-neutral, independent, and unbiased consultants of technology, telecom, cloud, and security services.
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]]>Mon, 23 Jul 2018 13:50:54 -0500