About 3D Creative Services

Based in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, 3D Creative Services produces prototypes, single models, and a wide variety of displays and other services. The company is known across the defense industrial base for its work creating mockups that are frequently used by major prime contractors and government organizations at trade shows and other industry events. The company uses a wide variety of processes, technology, and materials including high tolerance machining, welding, plastic fabrication, and molds & castings among others. Examples of 3D Creative Services' customers include Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Ingersoll Rand, General Electric, BAE Systems, SAIC, Lockheed Martin and other major defense contractors. Travis Best, Vice President of 3D Creative Services, and a customer of Atomus sat down for an interview to give his experience with the Atomus product.

Atomus prepared a couple hundred pages of documentation showing how our system was built to be compliant with the DFARS 7012... Atomus made the audit process basically painless."

Travis Best

Vice President of 3D Creative Services

Why were you looking for a DFARS 7012 compliance solution?

A good percentage of our customer base was requiring it. These customers have required cybersecurity for a while, but in the past, they hadn't really enforced it. I think due to the changes in the cybersecurity climate, they have been really pushing more recently make sure everyone in their supply chain is compliant.

Our customers asked us for documented proof on how we are enforcing our cybersecurity requirements. Without that documentation they said we aren't doing business with you; we're not going to even give you the opportunity to bid or look at the package. What it came down to was we had a large job from one of the major primes that we wanted to quote on. To get access to the data, we needed to complete a cybersecurity survey. To continue with the project, we needed to provide documentation on our cybersecurity and have it pass their internal review to move forward.

How was it going through an audit with a top 10 Defense Prime?

Using Atomus going through the cybersecurity audit with the major prime was really easy. Atomus prepared a couple hundred pages of documentation showing how our system was built to be compliant with the DFARS 7012 cybersecurity standard in our contract. I just sent the prime's cybersecurity team a link to Atomus' documentation and answered a couple additional questions about my business. With Atomus I spent maybe 2 hours from start to finish to pass the cybersecurity audit. Atomus made the audit process basically painless. More than anything I felt relieved that if the prime contractor had any additional questions, I could reach out to the Atomus team and they would know exactly what the prime was looking for given their experience with these audits.

How would you advise a friend that received a cybersecurity questionnaire?

I actually recommended Atomus to two friends of mine with companies in the aerospace and defense space. I told them if they chose Atomus to not be stressed at all. I honestly couldn't have imagined how easy it would have been and how great Atomus is at supporting their customers.

I told them honestly how easy Atomus was and what a great solution it was to basically download the software and you're good to go. I can't imagine having to do this process on my own. I looked at other solutions offered by different vendors to help me pass my audit. The closest company I could find with the same documentation capability was Exostar and after doing a demo of their product I learned they offer a solution to track your documentation. That means I would need to go through all 110 controls on my own and manually document it. I couldn't even begin to imagine the number of hours I would have to spend to get anything close to what I got with Atomus.

What were you looking for in a solution?

The biggest thing I was looking for in a solution was not adding more to my personal workload. So, I was looking for something that was easy to manage over its lifetime and not something I had to be constantly watching, updating, documenting and so on. What really sold me on Atomus was the speed at which the Atomus solution got our company cybersecure and compliant. Others in the market would come in and try and fix or document our existing system which would take a minimum of three to six months at a much larger cost.

With the Atomus solution we were told it would be less than two weeks, potentially faster which was exactly what we were looking for. In reality once all the licenses were approved it was two and a half days till we were up and running. Not only did it get us up to compliance quickly, it was at a much better price point than everybody else.

Choosing Atomus

3D Creative Services made the decision to go with Atomus, reducing the time, cost, and headache of complying with cybersecurity requirements on their own. They were able to increase trust with their customers and continue to grow their sales.