How Keeper Helps Businesses Comply With the New CMMC Ruling

With the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 2.0 now finalized by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), contractors and suppliers across the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) must ensure they meet stricter cybersecurity standards to maintain eligibility for DoD contracts. Achieving and maintaining CMMC compliance is no small task — it requires robust security protocols, continuous monitoring and strict control over access to sensitive information.

This is where Keeper Enterprise, a leading password management and cybersecurity platform, becomes a game changer. In this blog, we’ll explore how Keeper Enterprise can help organizations align with the new CMMC 2.0 requirements by detailing the capabilities that directly address the critical requirements of the CMMC framework and ensure smooth compliance.

Overview of CMMC 2.0: What you need to know

The CMMC 2.0 framework ensures that DoD contractors can adequately protect Federal Contract Information (FCI) and Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). Depending on the sensitivity of the information they handle, organizations will need to achieve compliance at one of three levels:

Level 1 – Foundational: Requires basic safeguarding of FCI.

Level 2 – Advanced: Requires enhanced security controls aligned with NIST 800-171 to protect CUI.

Level 3 – Expert: Requires compliance with NIST 800-172, focusing on advanced protections for highly sensitive data.

Each level contains a set of practices and controls that companies must implement. Keeper Enterprise offers specific tools and solutions to help companies meet these stringent requirements, streamlining the path to compliance.

How Keeper® helps achieve CMMC compliance

Here’s how Keeper helps organizations achieve CMMC compliance.

Access control and credential management

CMMC Requirement Addressed:

• Access Control (AC): Limit access to authorized users only.
• Identification and Authentication (IA): Authenticate users before granting access.

Keeper Enterprise provides robust credential management that meets access control requirements by ensuring only authorized users can access sensitive systems.

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Keeper allows businesses to implement granular access controls by defining user roles and assigning permissions. This ensures that users only have access to the data they need.
• Zero-trust architecture: Keeper follows zero-trust principles, requiring users to verify their identity at every stage, eliminating implicit trust within the system.
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Keeper natively supports MFA to enforce secure authentication, adding an extra layer of protection against unauthorized access.

By centralizing and securely managing passwords, Keeper ensures that only authenticated users access critical systems and applications, satisfying the Access Control requirements outlined in CMMC 2.0.

Encryption of data in transit and at rest

CMMC Requirement Addressed:

• System and Communications Protection (SC): Encrypt data in transit and at rest to prevent unauthorized disclosure.

Keeper Enterprise utilizes End-to-End Encryption (E2EE) to protect credentials and sensitive information. All data stored in Keeper Vaults is encrypted at the device level before being transmitted to Keeper’s cloud, ensuring that only authorized users can decrypt and view the data. This prevents external parties or insiders from intercepting or reading information without the proper keys.

This encryption meets CMMC’s requirements for data protection, ensuring secure communications and storage, and provides the highest level of security for CUI and FCI.

Auditing and monitoring for continuous compliance

CMMC Requirement Addressed:

• Audit and Accountability (AU): Maintain logs and audits of system activity to track actions and identify anomalies.
• Risk Management (RM): Continuously monitor and address security risks.

Keeper includes advanced reporting and auditing tools that give organizations complete visibility into credential usage and access activities. Security teams can generate detailed reports to demonstrate compliance and identify unusual behavior in real time.

• Audit logs: Keeper provides comprehensive logs of user activities, including access attempts and password changes. These logs are immutable and essential for meeting audit requirements under CMMC.
• Compliance reporting: Security administrators can generate custom compliance reports that demonstrate adherence to CMMC policies, making it easy to provide evidence during audits.
• Anomaly detection: Keeper’s monitoring tools can alert administrators to suspicious activity, such as failed login attempts or unexpected access patterns.

These capabilities ensure continuous compliance by giving organizations the tools to monitor security and take immediate corrective action when risks are identified.

Secure collaboration and sharing

CMMC Requirement Addressed:

• Media Protection (MP): Securely control access to media containing sensitive information.
• System and Communications Protection (SC): Ensure secure sharing of sensitive information.

With Keeper, organizations can safely share credentials and sensitive data with internal teams and external partners without compromising security. Keeper’s encrypted vaults allow controlled passwords and confidential information sharing via shared folders or records.

• Controlled access: Keeper enforces least-privilege access, ensuring users can only access the specific data they need for their role.
• Vault-to-vault sharing: Secure collaboration between departments or external contractors through encrypted data-sharing capabilities ensures compliance with CMMC’s media protection standards.

This approach ensures that sensitive data is always protected and only accessible to authorized personnel, minimizing the risk of accidental data exposure.

Incident response and recovery planning

CMMC Requirement Addressed:

• Incident Response (IR): Develop and implement incident response plans.
• Recovery (RE): Ensure systems can recover from incidents.

Keeper Enterprise supports incident response by allowing administrators to respond quickly to compromised credentials or security incidents. If a user’s password is exposed, Keeper’s tools can immediately revoke access and trigger password resets across all affected systems.

Additionally, Keeper’s Backup and Restore capabilities ensure that organizations can recover data during a cyber incident or system failure, meeting the CMMC’s recovery requirements.

• Breach notifications: Administrators are notified of credential exposure events, enabling rapid incident response.
• Password rotation: Keeper makes it easy to enforce password policies and rotate compromised credentials immediately.

These features align with the CMMC’s focus on response and recovery, helping organizations respond to threats effectively and restore normal operations quickly.

Employee training and awareness

CMMC Requirement Addressed:

• Awareness and Training (AT): Train employees on security best practices.

Keeper Enterprise includes tools to educate employees on password security and safe digital practices, helping organizations meet CMMC’s training requirements. Organizations can ensure employees understand their role in safeguarding information through security awareness campaigns and phishing simulation exercises.

• Security health monitoring: Keeper’s Security Audit feature assesses password hygiene across the organization, providing feedback on weak passwords and reuse issues.
• Phishing-resistant MFA: Keeper’s MFA solutions reduce the risk of phishing attacks, a critical component of employee security.

These training tools ensure that employees remain vigilant and contribute to the organization’s security posture.

Keeper Enterprise makes CMMC compliance achievable

Achieving compliance with CMMC 2.0 can be daunting, but with the right tools, organizations can efficiently meet the DoD’s requirements. Keeper Enterprise offers a comprehensive suite of capabilities — from credential management and encryption to auditing, secure sharing and incident response — aligning directly with the CMMC framework.

By implementing Keeper, organizations not only enhance their cybersecurity posture but also streamline their path to CMMC compliance, ensuring eligibility for critical DoD contracts. Whether you’re handling FCI, CUI or other sensitive data, Keeper equips your business with the tools and confidence needed to stay compliant, secure and competitive in the defense sector.

Curious to see how Keeper Enterprise can help your organization comply with CMMC 2.0? Request a demo or start a 14-day business trial today.