CMMC Compliance — The CUI Boundary
Secure Enclave
A dedicated, accredited boundary where Controlled Unclassified Information lives, separate from the commercial tools the rest of the business runs on.
Talk to us about your boundaryMost contractors don't need to move the whole business into a government cloud. They need one place, accredited to the right level, where CUI can live while everything else keeps running the way it already does.
Scope creep
Without a boundary, CUI touches every system it passes through, and every one of those systems is now in assessment scope.
Re-platforming cost
Moving the entire business into GCC High to protect a handful of files is expensive and usually unnecessary.
Assessment risk
An undefined boundary is the single most common reason a Level 2 assessment stalls.
Slower delivery
Teams working entirely inside a hardened environment move slower on everyday work that never touches CUI.
Everything that touches, stores, or transmits CUI lives here, accredited to the control baseline your contracts require.
Technical drawings and engineering data
Program and contract documentation
Export-controlled file shares
Assessment evidence and SSPs
Everyday business operations that never touch CUI keep running on the commercial tools your team already knows.
Finance, AP/AR, and the general ledger
CRM and sales pipeline
HR, payroll, and general email
Marketing and public-facing systems
How we build it
Scope
Identify every system, file share, and workflow where CUI actually flows today.
Build
Stand up the accredited environment: identity, endpoint, network, and logging controls to the required baseline.
Migrate
Move in-scope data and workflows into the enclave, with a clean cutover for the people who use them daily.
Operate
Ongoing monitoring, patching, and evidence collection, so the boundary stays audit-ready between assessments.
| Factor | Secure Enclave | Full GCC High migration | Do nothing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to stand up | Weeks | Months to a year | N/A |
| Relative cost | Scoped to CUI systems only | Every seat, every app | Lowest upfront, highest risk |
| Assessment scope | Just the enclave | The entire environment | Undefined, assessors decide |
| Day-to-day friction | Minimal outside the boundary | Everyone works inside hardened tooling | None until the assessment fails |
CUI touches a defined, limited set of systems and people
Most of the business has nothing to do with CUI
You need Level 2 certification on a realistic timeline
CUI is genuinely woven through nearly every system you run
You already operate primarily in a government cloud
You need Level 3, which carries its own additional controls
Is the Secure Enclave the same thing as GCC High?
Not necessarily. It's a defined, accredited boundary sized to your actual CUI footprint. For some contractors that boundary runs inside GCC High; for others a properly hardened commercial-cloud environment is sufficient. We size it to what your contracts actually require.
Does everyone in the company need an enclave account?
No. Only the people and systems that actually handle CUI need to be inside the boundary. Everyone else keeps working exactly as they do today.
How does this affect our assessment scope?
A well-defined boundary is what lets an assessor scope the engagement to the enclave itself, instead of every system CUI might have touched. That's usually the difference between a contained assessment and an open-ended one.
Can the enclave grow with us?
Yes. It's built to add users, workloads, and data sources as your CUI footprint grows, without re-architecting the boundary each time.
