Nobody packs a chute to pass inspection. They pack it to open.
Same goes for your environment. DFARS, NIST 800-171 and 800-53, CMMC, FedRAMP — the mandates keep moving; the engineering underneath them doesn't. Drop Zone Security hardens identity, cloud, endpoint, and the non-human identities now driving automation and AI. As copilots and agents begin retrieving data, calling APIs, and taking action, we govern what identity they run as, what they can reach, and when a human must stay in the loop. We implement the controls ourselves — we don't hand you a checklist.
supply chain
still self-attest to
identity compromise
defense-sector breach
The contract is
on the line.
Defense contractors are on the front line of a decade-long cyber campaign. The threat is real, the obligations are contractual, and AI adoption is expanding the trust surface faster than most governance programs can inventory it. The consequences of failure show up in breach headlines, contract ineligibility, sensitive-data exposure, and automated actions taken by identities nobody properly bounded.
Nation-state targeting
Advanced persistent threat groups are actively targeting DIB suppliers for IP theft, supply-chain pre-positioning, and access to classified programs. Small and mid-tier subs are viewed as the path of least resistance.
Self-attestation, full liability
CMMC third-party assessments are suspended — the requirements aren't. Primes are still flowing 7012, 7019, and 7020 down, SPRS scores still gate awards and options, and with no assessor checking your work, your attestation carries False Claims Act exposure on its own.
Identity-driven breaches
Attackers don't just break in — they authenticate and operate as trusted entities. Human users, service principals, API tokens, workload identities, and AI agents can all become execution paths. The question is no longer only who can sign in; it is what that identity can reach, retrieve, and do once trusted.
The pause changed the assessor.
Not the assignment.
On July 13, DoD suspended CMMC Phase 2 — the third-party assessments that were set to begin November 10, 2026. The requirements didn't move. The accountability did — onto you.
DFARS 252.204-7012
Still in every contract it was in before. NIST 800-171 remains contractually required, primes are still required to flow it down, and primes can keep their own CMMC requirements in subcontracts regardless of DoD's pause.
Self-assessments & SPRS
Level 1 and Level 2 self-assessments still have to be done. Your SPRS score still has to be posted, affirmed annually, and accurate — and it still gates contract awards and option exercises.
Your attestation is the record
With no third-party assessor scheduled to check your work, your self-attestation IS the compliance record — with False Claims Act exposure attached if it's wrong.
Identity is the
new perimeter.
The perimeter still matters. But modern attackers increasingly bypass hardened infrastructure by targeting identity, trust relationships, access workflows, and supply chain dependencies instead. The objective is no longer simply to “break in” — it is to operate as a trusted entity inside the environment.
Agentic AI raises the stakes. Every copilot, agent, workload, API integration, and service principal introduces another identity and authorization path. DZS governs the identity plane around them — what context they run as, what data they can retrieve, which APIs and systems they can touch, what actions require human approval, and how every decision is logged. The model is not the security boundary. Identity, authorization, data scope, and execution control are.
- 01 Every user is a verified identity with contextual access, not a static credential.
- 02 Every device is attested and compliant before it touches CUI — no exceptions.
- 03 Every workload and AI agent has an explicit identity, bounded permissions, defined data access, and an accountable human owner.
- 04 Every privileged action — human or agentic — is brokered, least-privileged, time-bound where possible, and auditable.
- 05 Every signal — sign-in risk, device posture, token use, workload behavior — feeds continuous authorization and detection.
Five mission areas.
One operational mandate.
Every engagement ties back to one outcome: measurable reduction in identity-driven risk, mapped directly to contract survival and CMMC alignment. No "strategy decks" without implementation plans. No assessments without remediation.
Manifest to
rally point.
An airborne operation runs the same way every time, in the same order, whether it's a training jump or the real thing. Nobody improvises at 800 feet. We run an engagement on that sequence — and the steps below are the actual ones, mapped to what happens in your environment.
We inventory what's actually there: every user, admin, service principal, managed identity, AI agent, API integration, device, tenant, and data store — and every mandate your contracts actually put you under. Most engagements find non-human access paths and delegated permissions nobody realized were live.
A working session with your team on how the environment is supposed to behave — access paths, approval flows, what happens when someone leaves, and what automation or AI is permitted to retrieve or do without a human. The gap between that intent and what's actually configured becomes the finding list.
The design: identity plane, Conditional Access policy set, device trust model, privileged access, workload and agent identity model, AI data and API boundaries, and human approval points — built for your workloads, your primes, and your contracts. Not a reference architecture with your logo on it.
Independent configuration review against CIS benchmarks and the control set your contract names. The person — or agent — requesting access does not get to approve its own authority. The person checking the build is not the person who built it. That separation is the whole point, and it's the step most engagements skip.
The change plan: what moves first, blast radius, rollback triggers, maintenance window, and who gets told what. Written down before anything is touched.
Pre-cutover checks: break-glass accounts created and tested, backup authentication paths confirmed, logging and alerting live so we can see the effect the moment it lands.
Policies staged in report-only. We watch real sign-in traffic against them before a single user is blocked, and trace every policy back to the control it satisfies.
Enforcement on a controlled pilot group first. Every exception surfaces and gets a decision — approved, remediated, or documented — before the change goes wider. Nothing moves on an unanswered finding.
Enforce across the tenant, with someone watching sign-in logs and the help desk queue in real time and a rollback already staged. Cutovers happen when your people are awake, not at 2 a.m. for our convenience.
Evidence package, SSP and POA&M, runbooks written for your team, and knowledge transfer that survives turnover. Then continuous monitoring, annual affirmation support, and quarterly reporting — because compliance is a state, not an event.
The name is a method,
not a metaphor.
A drop zone is planned long before the aircraft leaves the ground. The run-in is rehearsed. Every rig is inspected twice, by someone who isn't the one wearing it. The rally point is briefed to everyone, so the plan survives contact with the dark. Then people exit — and it has to work the first time, because there is no second pass.
That's the standard we bring to a tenant cutover, a Conditional Access rollout, an AI-agent deployment, and an assessment window. Rehearsed, inspected, bounded, briefed, executed — with a rally point if something goes sideways at 2 a.m.
Fixed scope.
Fixed fee.
We start where the risk is highest and the win is fastest: the identity control plane around your Microsoft 365 and cloud environment. That now includes both workforce identities and the service principals, workload identities, API credentials, copilots, and agents acting on their behalf. Most implementation work is fixed-scope and fixed-fee; ongoing vCISO and security-governance functions are retained only where the mission actually requires continuous ownership. We scope first because we don't price risk we haven't mapped.
Readiness Review
- M365 tenant posture assessment
- Benchmark verification (CIS / SCUBA)
- Identity & access gap review
- AI agent, workload identity & API exposure review
- Prioritized findings report
- Roadmap to a hardened baseline
Tenant Hardening
- Identity & access hardening (Entra, CA, MFA)
- Service principal, workload & agent identity controls
- Email & collaboration (Defender, EOP)
- Endpoint & device (Intune, CIS baselines)
- Audit logging & alerting
- Hardening report mapped to CIS + 800-171
- Knowledge-transfer session
Hardening + CMMC
- Everything in Tenant Hardening
- 110-control NIST 800-171 gap assessment
- SSP & POA&M development
- SPRS score preparation
- Defensible self-assessment evidence package
- AI acceptable-use, identity & data-boundary baseline
- Affirmation support (you submit)
vCISO & Security Program Leadership
Primes, subs, integrators —
and anyone under a mandate.
Most of our work sits in the defense industrial base, where the obligations bite hardest and the deadlines are real. Many of those same teams are adopting copilots, LLMs, and automation before identity, data, and approval boundaries are ready. If your organization carries a security mandate and AI is beginning to act inside the same environment, we're likely a fit.
Military roots.
Operator discipline.
DZS is led by airborne-rooted cybersecurity operators who have stood up tenants, hardened identity planes, driven CMMC programs, and designed governance around cloud automation and emerging agentic AI risk. We treat AI security as an identity-and-authorization problem first: what principal is acting, what authority it has, what data it can reach, and who remains accountable. We're not a staffing shop. We're not paper-only advisors. Every engagement is led by the people accountable for the design and execution.
Based in Mechanicsville, Maryland — minutes from NAS Patuxent River — we know the southern Maryland defense corridor because we live in it. On-site engagements, community-rooted delivery, and direct access to the architects doing the work.
We don't hand you a checklist.
under a real security obligation.
No junior handoffs.
On-site when it matters.
Thirty minutes.
No decks. No pitches.
A focused conversation about your tenant, your contracts, your identity exposure, and what AI or automation is beginning to touch. We'll map the human and non-human trust paths first. Zero obligation. If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you — and we'll point you to who is.