How DFARS Compliance Improves your Business

The Department of Defense is cracking down on government contractors who aren’t DFARS compliant. Becoming DFARS compliant may sound like a giant headache, but the good news is that DFARS compliance can improve your overall business. All 14 DFARS categories will improve your business in some way. However, the 14 categories can be synthesized into five main takeaways on how DFARS will improve your business.

With DFARS compliance you can boost your employees’ knowledge, optimize your business processes, create timely incident response methods, and build a safe working environment. With the help of Swift Systems, DFARS compliance shouldn’t be looked at as a nuisance, but as a checklist on how to improve your business.

Read on to discover the five main ways DFARS compliance will improve your business – with an eye toward what that means for high-compliance IT support.

 

User Training

I hate to say it, but the weakest links in every cybersecurity team are the users. Employees regularly become sucked in by phishing emails or mess with settings that are crucial to security.

The DFARS regulations are particularly confusing for some employees. While they don’t have to understand every category of DFARS, everyone who is accessing controlled unclassified information needs to understand the DFARS regulations and the security implementations in place to protect CUI.

User training is crucial to DFARS compliance. All employees need training on the proper ways to access and handle the information, not only to maintain cybersecurity, but also to help them understand what information can and cannot be discussed outside of the workplace. There may even be issues with discussion of certain information within the workplace—some employees may be authorized to access certain documents, while others may not be. Confining the secrecy of information to only those who are authorized is crucial to your DFARS compliance.

The good news is that, with increased user training, your employees will gain new knowledge and new and better ways of working with data. Your employees are the lifeblood of your company. Look at user training as an investment in the future of your employees and the future of your business.

 

Agile Solutions to a Range of Needs

With 14 categories, DFARS is an unwieldy document with a wide range of requirements. These run from access control to an on-site security team to configuration management. In order to meet all of these requirements, your staff and business processes need to be flexible enough to implement requirements quickly and efficiently.

Your team needs to be able to quickly learn new processes and understand the importance of upholding data security. Your business processes will need to be flexible enough to react to an incident with appropriate speed and provide immediate solutions to an issue. This may mean discussing solutions to issues beforehand and going through staff trainings for incident response.

Becoming more equipped to handle a wide range of scenarios or needs means increased services that you can offer your clients. This increases the attractiveness of your business and may gain you more contracts in the long run.

 

Excellent Data Tracking Processes

As a government contractor, your team and facility combine to process lots and lots of data. Having an excellent process for tracking that data not only makes you DFARS compliant but improves your overall business. In order to be the best contractor you can be, you should be able to tell your clients exactly where their data is at any point in time. Ingrained in your business model should be a set process that states how data is handled and through what systems it’s processed. This will help you maintain the security of your systems and keep your clients informed as to how their data is handled.

The last thing you want is important data being processed through insecure systems.

 

Both Online and Offline Security

When you think of DFARS, you may think of just cybersecurity. But DFARS compliance also requires personnel security. While this at first may seem like a huge drain of your resources, when you’re handling government information, you put yourself, your facility, and your employees at risk of more than a cyberattack.

Depending on the information you handle, you could become a target for a robbery. Hiring a security team protects your employees and your clients’ data. A safer working environment means more productive employees and a more competitive business. Boost your reputation while becoming DFARS compliant with security personnel.

 

Fast Deployment

When an incident occurs, DFARS compliance means a fast and appropriate reaction from your team. Knowing how to react quickly and efficiently doesn’t just make you DFARS compliant, but it also improves your business processes. Having the right processes in place and the appropriate staff training for them to be enacted quickly means having a business that is a well-oiled machine.

Look at DFARS requirement for immediate and thorough incident response as a test of your business’s ability to respond to a crisis. While we all hope that an emergency will never occur at our place of work, when you work in cybersecurity with controlled information, you’re at significantly higher risk for a cyberattack. DFARS compliance can help you work out the kinks ahead of an emergency and reassure you and your staff that you can handle any emergency that comes your way.

 

Stress-Free IT Services

Becoming DFARS compliant is no small task. It can be a stressful process with real consequences if not completed on time. Swift Systems has years of experience helping contractors become compliant with government requirements – HIPPA and DFARS.

When you work with Swift Systems, you’ll receive stress-free IT. Whether you opt for cloud security, server security, or managed IT services, you’ll know that you’re in good hands.

Swift Systems’ mission is to serve organizations with IT they can count on. We do this by providing dedicated in-person support at a fixed monthly cost, by following a proven process based on deep expertise, and by always putting our clients’ needs above industry preconceptions.

If you’re ready to improve your business with DFARS compliance, contact Swift Systems today. We can get you and your business headed in the right direction.

 

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