About Kform

Kform is a defense innovation company with full-stack engineering, manufacturing, and sales. The company builds products directly for the warfighter and works with major defense contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, as well as commercial tech giants such as Google and Apple. However, its primary focus is on serving the Department of Defense (DoD) and the intelligence community. The company is a privately held family business that has worked with the DoD for the last 45 years.

Callye Keen, the CEO of Kform, has been at the company for 26 years and primary focuses on leading product design. Prior to Atomus, Callye and his team experienced limitations throughout their compliance journey. Given their heavy involvement with the DoD, compliance with NIST 800-171, DFARS 7012 and CMMC is extremely important for the business.

Atomus was able to address our compliance requirements instantaneously and provided a clear direction to move quickly."

Callye Keen

CEO of Kform

Story Highlights

• ‍‍‍Resolving MSP Roadblocks: Atomus provided Kform with a solution that combined technology and human support services to help address their MSP limitations on government compliance.
• ‍Simplifying Onboarding of External Partners: Getting external partners compliant was challenging for Kform. With Atomus, Kform now has a compliant workflow to onboard and make external partners compliant.    
• ‍Enabling Secure Remote Work: Atomus provided Kform with the necessary cybersecurity infrastructure to seamlessly automate the configuration, management, and monitoring of remote employee settings and configurations.

Resolving MSP Roadblocks

Kform’s previous method of handling IT and compliance with NIST 800-171, DFARS 7012, and CMMC was by trying multiple different IT managed service providers (MSP). Kform started addressing these compliance requirements several years ago. However, while attempting to meet these requirements, Kform had to frequently change MSPs because they lacked experience with government compliance, specifically NIST 800-171, and did not understand the complexities of manufacturing, such as operational technology and advanced networking. As a result, these challenges lead to wasted time, frustration, and a delay in Kform’s compliance progress.

While Kform still needed general IT support from an MSP, they also needed to address the NIST 800-171, DFARS 7012, and CMMC cybersecurity requirements in their contracts. Therefore, Kform decided to use Atomus as a solution to comply with these requirements. Atomus helped fill key gaps in Kform’s compliance process through its unique combination of technology and human support services. From a technology standpoint, the Aegis platform helped automate the documentation process and streamline the implementation, monitoring, and maintenance of Kform’s cybersecurity. In addition, Kform’s team now has access to proper guidance to help them understand and quickly solve complex compliance challenges.

We had an issue and were able to get on the phone with a compliance expert right away and address the problem correctly."

Callye Keen

CEO of Kform ‍

Simplifying Onboarding of External Partners  

Kform works with many nontraditional defense contractors such as startups and commercial companies entering the defense ecosystem. Getting these external partners compliant is crucial for Kform because they have DFARS 7012 flow-down requirements. This means anyone Kform brings in to help on a project must comply with these cybersecurity requirements. It is important for Kform to ensure that these external partners are compliant. Failing to do so could result in Kform missing out on contracts or experiencing delays in current contracts. Especially when some of the partners Kform works with have small teams that lack the resources, time, and expertise to become compliant with NIST 800-171, DFARS 7012, and CMMC.

Atomus provided Kform a solution that helped streamline their compliance process, making it easier to get external partners compliant. With Atomus, Kform can download Atomus Aegis onto any external partner or Kform-owned device so the partner can securely and compliantly handle the data for Kform’s contracts.

Enabling Secure Remote Work

Atomus’ solution has been game-changing for Kform’s ability to do remote work. In the past, Kform faced challenges in keeping track of the compliance settings and configurations of employee endpoints, even when all the employees were in the same location. Atomus simplifies this process by providing automated configuration, management, and monitoring of employee settings and configurations. This ensures that employees can be onboarded seamlessly, and their compliance can be tracked through the Aegis cloud compliance platform. As a result, this has allowed Kform to efficiently secure remote workers, enabling them to grow faster and increase their current number of satellite facilities.