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Cybersecurity Training and Compliance Gives Elinor Coatings a Leg Up on Their Competition
With the help of: Impact Dakota
About
Founded in 2006, Elinor Coatings, LLC, a family-owned business, specializes in research in galvanic corrosion and the creation of anti-corrosion and surface protection solutions. By employing cutting edge technology and comprehensive material research, evaluation, and testing procedures, they produce high-quality chromate-free coating products for use in military and commercial applications.
The Challenge
Elinor Coatings mission to launch and advance greener coatings quickly caught the attention of many aviation, space and defense OEMs, as well as the DOD. Along with these advanced formulations and strong customer interest came demand for compliance to strict intellectual property and information cybersecurity requirements. After nearly a year of meetings, assessments, and delays, Elinor Coatings was making little progress on understanding the real impact of adhering to CMMC. The company was spending time, money and resources with a frustrating lack of progress.
Impact Dakota helped us organize and improve our IT practices and basic protocols to align with CMMC and navigate quite a complicated initial process. Even with a solid IT team in place, many organizations will struggle to adopt some of the more complicated requirements. I can't imagine how long it would have taken us to work through the documentation on our own, and we are grateful for the assistance Jodie and Impact Dakota provided. The time, money and frustration we saved working with Impact Dakota has given us the leg up we need as a small business to ensure we are doing everything we can to protect ourselves and our customers.
MEP's Role
Elinor Coatings Chief Technical Officer and Co-Founder Dante Battocchi attended a cybersecurity workshop offered by Impact Dakota, part of the MEP National Network™, and supported by the University of North Dakota Center for Innovation which provided information about DFARS 7012, the CMMC Interim Rule, and NIST SP 800-171. After the workshop the company reached out to Impact Dakota for additional information. Impact Dakota provided a no-cost assessment followed by on-site work and support to develop an implementation plan. The initial assessment was completed and presented in easy-to-understand format within a few weeks, something previous IT companies had been unable to do after nearly a year.
Impact Dakota provided Elinor Coatings with a clear path forward. Elinor Coatings Project Manager Adrian Dawson-Becker dug in and hit the ground running with high level of engagement and strong IT skills and knowledge. The team conducted a full gap assessment to the NIST SP800-171 requirements, developed the required system security plan, incident response plan and other policies and training material needed to reduce risks and build resilience. These team efforts resulted in them being able to confidently report their cybersecurity compliance to their OEM and DOD customers.