// CASE STUDIES

Real Outcomes. Real Organizations.

Every engagement starts with a clear goal and a way to measure whether we hit it. These case studies reflect real outcomes from our team's work in enterprise and federal environments, with identifying details removed.

// COMPLIANCE READINESS

CMMC Assessment Readiness for a Defense Subcontractor

// CLIENT PROFILE

Defense subcontractor with 80-150 employees providing engineering services to prime contractors in the Defense Industrial Base. No existing compliance program, no dedicated security staff, and limited documentation of existing controls.

// THE CHALLENGE

The organization had a 6-month window to demonstrate CMMC Level 2 readiness before a C3PAO assessment required by a major prime contract. They had no System Security Plan, no formal policies, and no structured evidence of control implementation. The security posture was ad hoc and undocumented, with critical gaps in access control, audit logging, incident response, and CUI handling procedures.

// OUR APPROACH

Gap Assessment: Conducted a control-by-control evaluation across all 110 NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 2 security requirements. Identified implemented, partially implemented, and missing controls with a prioritized remediation roadmap.

SSP Development: Authored a complete System Security Plan documenting the CUI environment boundary, data flows, control implementations, and responsible parties for each requirement.

Control Implementation: Worked with internal IT to deploy and configure technical controls including centralized logging, multi-factor authentication, endpoint detection, encrypted CUI storage, and access control policies.

Evidence Collection: Built an organized evidence repository mapping artifacts (screenshots, configurations, policy documents, access logs) to each NIST 800-171 control for assessor review.

Assessment Preparation: Conducted internal readiness reviews simulating C3PAO assessment methodology. Identified remaining weaknesses, documented them in the POA&M, and prepared the team for assessor interviews.

// RESULTS

// CONTROLS

110

NIST 800-171 controls assessed, documented, and mapped to evidence artifacts

// DELIVERABLES

SSP + POA&M

Complete System Security Plan and Plan of Action & Milestones delivered and accepted

// TIMELINE

Assessment-Ready

Organization achieved readiness within the contract-required window for C3PAO assessment

// DETECTION ENGINEERING

SIEM Alert Optimization for a Managed Service Provider

// CLIENT PROFILE

Managed service provider with 200+ employees operating a 24/7 security operations center serving multiple client environments. Primary SIEM platform was Splunk Enterprise with several hundred correlation searches and alerting rules deployed across client tenants.

// THE CHALLENGE

The SOC was generating over 15,000 alerts per day. Analysts had developed alert fatigue to the point where the team had stopped trusting the SIEM entirely. Genuine security events were being lost in noise, triage queues were days behind, and the organization was considering replacing the platform rather than fixing the detection logic. Turnover among analysts was increasing.

// OUR APPROACH

Detection Logic Audit: Reviewed every active correlation search and alerting rule. Categorized each by detection intent, false-positive rate, analyst action taken, and alignment with the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

False-Positive Elimination: Identified rules generating the highest volume of non-actionable alerts. Tuned thresholds, added exclusion logic for known-good behavior, and decommissioned rules with no valid detection purpose.

Use Case Re-Scoping: Rebuilt the detection strategy around prioritized threat scenarios relevant to the client base. Consolidated overlapping rules, implemented risk-based alerting, and established severity tiers tied to documented response procedures.

Runbook Development: Created analyst-facing runbooks for every remaining alert, documenting investigation steps, escalation criteria, and expected evidence collection. Eliminated ambiguity in triage decisions.

// RESULTS

// ALERT VOLUME

85% Reduction

Daily alert volume reduced from 15,000+ to under 2,500 actionable alerts

// ANALYST CAPACITY

Capacity Recovered

Analyst time redirected from noise triage to genuine investigation and threat hunting

// DETECTION QUALITY

Fidelity Improved

Detection fidelity measurably improved with every remaining alert tied to a documented response procedure

// LOG PIPELINE ARCHITECTURE

Cribl-Based Ingest Cost Reduction for a Federal Technology Contractor

// CLIENT PROFILE

Federal technology contractor with 150-300 employees operating Splunk Enterprise as their primary SIEM. The environment spanned multiple data centers and cloud environments supporting government contract work with strict audit and log retention requirements.

// THE CHALLENGE

Splunk ingest costs had exceeded the annual security operations budget. Log volume was growing faster than the organization could negotiate licensing relief, and there was no pipeline architecture between data sources and the SIEM. Every log source was forwarding raw, unfiltered data directly into Splunk, including high-volume, low-value sources that contributed to cost but not to detection or compliance coverage.

// OUR APPROACH

Ingest Analysis: Profiled every data source by volume, cost contribution, detection value, and compliance requirement. Identified sources consuming disproportionate license capacity relative to their security or audit value.

Cribl Stream Deployment: Designed and deployed a Cribl Stream architecture as an intermediary layer between data sources and Splunk. Established processing pipelines with source-specific routing, filtering, and enrichment logic.

Source Normalization: Standardized log formats across sources to reduce parsing overhead in Splunk. Stripped unnecessary fields, deduplicated redundant events, and applied data reduction techniques to high-volume sources without losing detection-relevant content.

Compliance Routing: Configured dual-destination routing to send compliance-required logs to both Splunk (for detection) and cost-effective S3 storage (for long-term retention), satisfying audit requirements without inflating SIEM license consumption.

// RESULTS

// INGEST VOLUME

40-60% Reduced

Splunk ingest volume reduced by 40-60% through filtering, deduplication, and intelligent routing

// COMPLIANCE

Zero Coverage Gaps

All audit-required log sources maintained with full retention compliance across federal contract requirements

// COST SAVINGS

Six-Figure Annual

Annual SIEM licensing cost savings in six figures, bringing the security operations budget back within plan

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