About Emersion Design
Location: Cincinnati, OH
Industry: Architectural Services
Description: Emersion Design provides professional services in architecture, structural engineering, and sustainability consulting, with its largest customer being the federal government.

The Challenge: Meeting CMMC Compliance Without Disrupting Operations

As a leading architectural firm, Emersion Design faced the challenge of gaining CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification) compliance—a requirement for working with the federal government. Achieving this compliance was essential but complex, involving stringent data security standards that went beyond the measures Emersion had implemented for NIST 800-171.

“CMMC compliance required us to change the way we secured our data and files and to do a lot more than the measures already taken for NIST 800-171 compliance,” said Bryant Cherry, IT Administrator at Emersion Design. “We needed a zero-trust tool that would secure our files in place no matter where they are.”

The Solution: FenixPyre’s Data-Centric Security

Emersion Design implemented FenixPyre’s zero-trust, data-centric security at the file level, which includes robust protection for data at rest, in transit, and in use. Using military-grade FIPS 140-2-validated encryption, FenixPyre allows compliance to travel with the data itself. Additionally, multifactor access controls and forensic logging establish a digital chain of custody for each file, ensuring that security and compliance requirements are met without changing the way users work or share files.

“The federal government isn’t going to work with us if we don’t meet CMMC compliance,” Cherry noted. “That was the driver for finding the FenixPyre solution, which has not only played an important role in getting us on the path to compliance but also elevated our cybersecurity without adding complexity, time, or other burdens.”

Implementation and User Experience

Emersion Design’s deployment of FenixPyre was impressively quick and simple, taking only five minutes to install on each user’s workstation. “It was a very small learning curve to get up to speed on using the FenixPyre platform,” Cherry said. “Most users figured it out very quickly.”

With a platform tailored to the unique needs of their industry, FenixPyre easily covered applications like AutoCAD, Revit, and Bluebeam, which contain much of the firm’s sensitive data. “FenixPyre was very responsive about ensuring the platform covered those applications’ files,” Cherry shared. “They were committed to making sure it worked for us 100 percent.” This configurability supports a broad range of industry-specific applications that require CMMC-compliant protection.

Outcomes: Compliance and Business Continuity

Thanks to FenixPyre, Emersion Design successfully advanced toward CMMC certification without needing to alter existing business processes. FenixPyre’s platform protected approximately 5,000 files at the time of implementation, with Emersion expecting that number to grow as the firm expands its use of the platform.

Customer Support: A Positive Experience

The support Emersion received from FenixPyre was described as “amazing.” Cherry emphasized that the support team is “very responsive, helpful, and willing to resolve any issues that come up.” With FenixPyre, Emersion Design experienced a straightforward and supportive implementation, reinforcing the decision to rely on FenixPyre for their data security needs.

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