Ongoing program ownership for organizations that sign an annual affirmation and want it to hold every day of the year: when CUI flows shift, vendors change, environments evolve, and new requirements land.
An executive signs an annual affirmation that your SPRS score is accurate. What happens between signatures is where that statement stays true or quietly stops being true. Without someone owning the program, the same pattern repeats across the DIB.
The affirmation is signed, or the assessment is passed. Documentation is fresh. Controls are configured as the SSP describes. Posture is strong, and everyone moves on to other priorities.
New vendors are onboarded without compliance review. CUI flows change as contracts evolve. Configurations drift as IT teams optimize for operations. The SSP becomes a document nobody updates. No one notices because no one is looking.
The next affirmation comes due, or a prime's questionnaire, or a DIBCAC letter. The team scrambles to reconcile what is documented with what is deployed. POA&Ms have gone stale. New requirements landed and were not addressed. Someone still has to sign.
Organizations that maintain their program between signatures sign with confidence and move through assessments predictably. Organizations that drift tend to find out when someone else checks: an assessor, a prime, or DIBCAC.
Stehrling Continuous Compliance is a recurring engagement that keeps your compliance program current all year: a structured program with defined deliverables, named practitioners, and clear ownership of the work that keeps your affirmation defensible.
Continuous Compliance addresses the work that doesn't fit anywhere else. It's beyond what an MSP delivers, because MSPs manage infrastructure, not compliance programs. It's beyond what a GRC platform provides, because platforms record posture, they don't maintain it. It's beyond what internal IT can absorb, because compliance program management requires expertise most IT teams reasonably don't have.
Continuous Compliance is what stays after the program is built, so your team is not carrying it alone.
Every Continuous Compliance engagement includes the same core deliverables. Scope and depth scale to your organizational complexity, but the program structure is consistent.
Your System Security Plan, policies, and procedures are reviewed every quarter against your actual environment. Drift is identified and remediated before it becomes a finding.
Active management of your Plan of Action and Milestones. New gaps documented, remediation tracked, closed items validated, and the entire POA&M kept current and audit-ready.
NIST 800-171 Rev 3 transition. CMMC reciprocity decisions. Framework updates. We monitor the regulatory landscape and translate changes into specific actions for your program.
New vendors, new services, environment changes, organizational restructuring. Every change with potential compliance impact is reviewed before it disrupts your posture.
Annual training refreshes, role-based training updates, and ongoing CUI handling awareness for your workforce. Training material updated as your environment evolves.
Before each annual affirmation, we re-check your SPRS score against the evidence and brief the executive who signs. Where a contract requires CMMC certification, recertification preparation starts 12 months out.
When contract scope changes, when a customer asks a compliance question, when a vendor proposes something that might affect your posture, your team has direct access to senior practitioners.
A standing quarterly readout to your leadership team. Posture status, regulatory changes, upcoming work, and the strategic view of where your compliance program is heading.
Every Continuous Compliance engagement includes the same core deliverables. What changes is scope, depth, and cadence, calibrated to the effort your environment actually requires. We don't sell tiers off a menu. We scope the work to your situation, and we price it accordingly.
The right scope emerges from understanding your environment, not from selecting a tier. A single-environment manufacturer with stable operations engages differently than a multi-environment international firm in active growth. A contractor with a strong internal team needs different oversight than one without compliance staff. The methodology is consistent. The scope is yours.
The scoping conversation happens during discovery, where we walk through your environment, contract obligations, change velocity, and the level of program ownership that fits your organization. We come out of that conversation with a defined engagement, a clear cadence, and pricing grounded in the actual effort the work will require.
No two Continuous Compliance engagements are identical, because no two compliance programs are identical. What's consistent is the discipline we bring to scoping them.
Continuous Compliance engagements operate against a predictable rhythm. Some work happens every month and quarter regardless of conditions. Some intensifies before each affirmation, and before recertification where a contract requires it.
Standing cadence with your compliance lead. Issues addressed, change impacts reviewed, upcoming work scoped. The working layer of the engagement.
Comprehensive review of SSP, POA&M, training status, regulatory landscape, and posture against your SSP and SPRS baseline. Findings, recommendations, and remediation plans.
Full annual refresh of training material, policy reviews, evidence collection, and risk register updates. Sets the program up for the year ahead.
SPRS score re-validated against evidence, open POA&M items reviewed, and a briefing for the executive who signs. Where a contract requires CMMC recertification, that preparation starts 12 months out.
Whether your program was built last quarter or you are a year past your last affirmation and noticing drift, Continuous Compliance meets you where you are. Talk to a practitioner about your current posture and what ongoing program ownership would look like. Expect a reply within one business day.
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An independent firm building NIST 800-171 compliance programs and AI governance for defense contractors and the DIB.