About Circle Optics

Based in Rochester, NY, Circle Optics designs advanced imaging systems with wide field of view, high resolution and low distortion lenses for the world’s largest aerospace, defense, robotics, autonomous vehicle, and immersive entertainment companies.

The company's main product Hydra has one of the highest resolutions of any 360° camera on the market. Instead of depending on overlapping fields of view to create a full 360° image, the company has developed a proprietary method of aligning polygonal fields of view to fill a 360° sphere. This creates a complete image at the hardware level eliminating costly post-processing requirements.

It was better to get things done ahead of time, instead of waiting until we were selected funded and not being able to complete contracting because we aren’t in the right place from a cybersecurity standpoint”

Ian Gauger

COO of Circle Optics

Additional Factors Covered In This Case Study

• Evaluating Options on the Market - When the Chief Operating Officer of Circle Optics was evaluating options on the market he found 3 specific challenges: a lack of aerospace and defense specific expertise, high upfront costs, and changing cybersecurity and compliance regulations.
• Upgrading Company IT Systems - As a growing company, Circle Optics realized it needed to upgrade its IT systems to allow for smoother IT onboardings for new employees and enable technologies that protected intellectual property on company computers.

Evaluating Options On The Market

Circle Optics is growing its business in the aerospace and defense market and needed to comply with cybersecurity requirements in order to continue winning contracts with the military and wider aerospace and defense industrial base. When Ian, the Chief Operating Officer of Circle Optics, was evaluating different options to get compliant with cybersecurity requirements he found a number of challenges:

A Lack of Aerospace and Defense Specific Expertise

There are dozens of cybersecurity providers on the market today. Where most providers offer their services to a breadth of industries, Atomus exclusively focuses on small aerospace and defense contractors who have NIST 800-171, DFARS 7012, and CMMC requirements. Most small businesses don't know where to start with cybersecurity and compliance. One reason Ian chose Atomus was because he needed a partner that understood the requirements the company has today and in the future.

High Upfront Costs

When looking through different options, Ian noticed most options on the market would require tens of thousands of dollars in upfront costs to get started. This led to a "catch 22." The company needed to win larger contracts in order to afford the upfront costs of cybersecurity and compliance. However in order to win larger contracts the company needed to show compliance with cybersecurity requirements. Atomus was an attractive option for Circle Optics because of its affordable monthly payments that avoided up front costs and helps small businesses manage their cash flow.

Changing Cybersecurity and Compliance Regulations

When learning more about cybersecurity and compliance requirements, Ian went to webinars discussing changes to the upcoming CMMC regulation. This made Ian think about how his cybersecurity and compliance solution would fare against changing regulations. If he hired a third party to custom build a solution for his company, he would need that provider to build custom updates when the regulations changed. This worried him because if the requirements ever changed he would be in a long line of his provider's customers who all need custom updates to their systems and compliance documentation. Because Atomus builds standardized environments for its customers with software, anytime there is a new regulation or updated requirement we can push out an update to all of our customers. This alleviated Ian's concerns with changing regulations and was a reason he chose Atomus.

Upgrading Company IT Systems

Small businesses working with the military and prime contractors often don't have the same Information Technology systems larger organizations have. When evaluating providers for compliance, Ian made sure to look for additional features made to help small and medium size businesses like Circle Optics.

We were looking for someone who could tell us what we needed, who understood what the problems were and what level of compliance we needed. We knew we needed a partner specialized in Aerospace and Defense cybersecurity”

Zak Niazi

CEO of Circle Optics

Standardizing IT Onboarding for New Employees

Many small companies don't have a standardized process for setting up systems that will store or use company data. For companies who don't have a standard process in place, this increases the time it takes to onboard a new employee in addition to causing cybersecurity and compliance issues.

As part of its offering, Atomus has a standardized onboarding flow for new employees. Companies just add a new user to the Atomus Platform and on the employees first day they go through Atomus' IT onboarding. This process includes cybersecurity awareness training, computer set up for their personal and/or company issued devices, and set up of associated services such as email and cloud storage in compliant environments.

With Atomus' standardized onboardings, Ian is able to focus on welcoming new employees to the Circle Optics team as opposed to implementing the dozens of different services packaged within the Aegis system on the new employee's computer.

Protecting Company Intellectual Property

Because small and medium size companies don't have the IT systems of a larger company, many don't have advanced features to protect company data. Many small businesses start with personal laptops and as they grow buy company laptops for employees. However these laptops may not have the cybersecurity and compliance features a growing business in the aerospace and defense business needs. As a result, the company's employees get frustrated with the lack of IT systems in place.

In addition, small businesses lose access to intellectual property when an employee has their laptop stolen or leaves the company by virtue of the computers not being encrypted or backed up on regular intervals by software. This makes BYOD programs that small companies have extremely hard to keep compliant.

With Atomus, small businesses don't need to worry about these concerns. Atomus delivers the IT systems and protection usually only available for larger companies to small companies in a hassle free affordable way. Small businesses don't need to go through the process of picking, configuring, and managing these solutions because Atomus takes care of it for them.

Choosing Atomus

Circle Optics 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 military sales.