“Cybersecurity Update for Small and Mid-Size (SME) Defense Contractors”

Meeting of the Santa Clarita Valley Chapter on August 15, 2023

Many SME Defense Contractors misunderstand complying with the DoD’s CMMC Assessment Program as fulfillment of complying with the NIST Security Requirements which is the standard SME Defense Contractors are used to measure compliance. This misunderstanding leads many SME Defense Contractors to have a false sense of the amount of time required to comply with these standards by focusing on the CMMC rulemaking delays. The reality is most defense contractors are running behind in the compliance schedule without knowing it.

This can result in the following issues for SME Defense Contractors:

• How will revisions to NIST SP 800-171 affect compliance deadlines for the SME Defense Contractor?
• Will the DoD provide extra time for SME Defense Contractors to implement these changes?
• Which revision of NIST SP 800-171 will be used to evaluate SME Defense Contractors’ compliance with CMMC?

Please join us in Valencia on Tuesday, August 15, (Networking and Breakfast: 7:15-7:45am & Meeting: 7:45–9:00am) when Jacob Horne, Chief Security Evangelist, Summit 7 Systems, will provide information on:

• How to avoid accidentally mistaking CMMC for NIST cyber requirements, which occurs frequently and thus may cost SME Defense Contractors their DoD contracts.
• The DoD expects SME Defense Contractors of all sizes to be fully compliant with NIST SP 800-171 Revision 2 requirements today.
• NIST will be expanding SP 800-171 requirements by 37% in Q1 2024 and create more compliance work for SME Defense Contractors.

The location of the meeting is at College of the Canyons. The meeting is free for members and $35 for non-members until August 8 ($45 thereafter).  Registration closes at 7:15am on Monday, August 14 to give time to send parking passes.  For more information and to register to attend the webinar go to https://adfscvaug23.eventbrite.com/

Information about joining The A&D Forum is at https://aerospacedefenseforum.org/.

The Santa Clarita Valley chapter of The Aerospace & Defense Forum is sponsored by the Santa Clarita Valley Economic Development Corporation.