Comprehensive risk assessments aligned to NIST 800-30, 800-53, and 800-171 — so you know exactly where your security posture stands before you spend a dollar remediating.
You can't fix what you haven't measured. Cleared Systems delivers formal risk assessments to federal contractors, civilian agencies, defense suppliers, and state, local, tribal, and education (SLED) organizations who need a clear, defensible picture of their current security posture and a prioritized roadmap for what to do about it.
Our assessments aren't a checklist exercise. They're the diagnostic that tells you which controls are working, which are partially implemented, which are missing entirely, and what the practical risk exposure looks like across your environment. The output isn't a fear-mongering report — it's a decision-grade document your leadership can use to allocate budget, defend timeline assumptions, and respond to prime, customer, or regulator questions with specifics.
What is a Federal & SLED Risk Assessment?
A risk assessment, done right, answers four questions in order. What information assets do you have, and how sensitive are they? What threats and vulnerabilities affect those assets? What's the likelihood and impact if a threat materializes? What controls reduce that risk to an acceptable level — and which of those controls do you currently have working?
We perform these assessments using methodologies aligned to NIST SP 800-30 and tailored to the federal or SLED context — meaning the threats we evaluate, the controls we benchmark against, and the language we use in the final report all match the regulatory environment you actually operate in.
For federal contractors, that typically means a NIST SP 800-171 control assessment with an enterprise risk overlay. For federal civilian agencies and FedRAMP-bound systems, it's NIST SP 800-53 against the appropriate baseline. For SLED organizations, it's often NIST 800-53, CJIS, StateRAMP, or sector-specific frameworks. We scope the right benchmark for the right organization — not a generic risk assessment that floats above your actual obligations.
Why You Need This Service
Several scenarios push organizations into formal risk assessment work:
You're preparing for a third-party assessment. Whether it's a CMMC C3PAO assessment, a FedRAMP 3PAO engagement, an OIG review, or a prime's audit — going in without an internal risk picture is how organizations get blindsided. A pre-assessment risk assessment surfaces what the third party will find, while there's still time to do something about it.
You failed an assessment. Failed assessments are recoverable, but only with a clear picture of why and a credible path back to compliance. Risk assessment is the foundation of that recovery.
You inherited an environment. New CISO, new compliance lead, new ownership — any of these create urgency to understand what you actually have and what risk it carries. Inherited environments almost always contain undocumented assumptions and unmeasured exposures.
A prime, customer, or insurer asked. Increasingly, organizations are being asked to produce a formal risk assessment as a condition of contract, customer trust, or insurance underwriting. The ask isn't going away.
You're scaling. A risk assessment that was accurate for a 50-person company doesn't describe a 300-person company. Growth changes scope, and scope changes risk.
Without a formal assessment, your security posture conversations are speculative. With one, they're specific. Specificity is what gets budgets approved and remediation prioritized correctly.
What We Deliver
A complete Federal & SLED risk assessment engagement produces:
- A documented system boundary that names what's in scope and what's not, with rationale
- An asset inventory tied to the boundary, including data flows, storage locations, and inheritance from cloud providers
- A control assessment against the applicable framework (NIST 800-171, 800-53, or sector-specific) with findings at the control level — implemented, partially implemented, planned, or not implemented
- A threat and vulnerability analysis tailored to your environment and sector
- A risk register prioritized by likelihood and impact, with remediation effort estimates
- A Plan of Action and Milestones (POA&M) suitable for submission to assessors, primes, or oversight bodies
- An executive briefing that translates the technical findings into the budget, timeline, and risk-acceptance decisions your leadership actually has to make
- A remediation roadmap that sequences fixes by dependency and risk-reduction value, not just severity score
The report is built to survive scrutiny. Every finding cites the specific control, the evidence reviewed, and the gap identified. No hand-waving.
Frameworks and Standards We Assess Against
NIST SP 800-30 (Risk Assessment Methodology), NIST SP 800-37 (Risk Management Framework), NIST SP 800-53 rev. 4 and rev. 5, NIST SP 800-171 rev. 2 and rev. 3, CMMC 2.0 Levels 1–3, FedRAMP (Low, Moderate, High baselines), FISMA, CJIS Security Policy, StateRAMP, HIPAA Security Rule, IRS Publication 1075, and DFARS 252.204-7012/7019/7020/7021. Sector-specific overlays for healthcare, education, utilities, and financial services are available where applicable.
Who This Is For
This service is built for federal contractors and defense suppliers, aerospace and DIB organizations, SLED organizations including state agencies, local governments, and tribal entities, power and utility providers under NERC CIP and TSA Security Directives, financial institutions under GLBA and state-level cyber regulations, and any organization preparing for, recovering from, or responding to a formal compliance assessment. See the full list of industries we serve for sector-specific framing.
You'll get the most from this engagement if you can identify a specific decision the risk assessment needs to inform — a contract bid, a remediation budget, a leadership briefing, an assessment deadline. The more specific the decision, the sharper the assessment.
How We Engage
Most of our risk assessments are project-scoped — defined deliverables, defined timeline, defined cost. They're frequently the entry point to a longer retainer engagement, because once you have a risk picture you almost always have remediation work that benefits from continuous expert support. Read more about how Cleared Systems engages, or request a quote for a risk assessment.
Many clients pair this service with Compliance Program Development when the assessment surfaces structural gaps, or with CMMC, CUI & DFARS Compliance when the assessment is the precursor to a formal CMMC engagement. For organizations that don't have senior compliance leadership in-house, Regulatory vCISO Services often follows naturally.
Common Questions
How long does a risk assessment take?
For a typical mid-sized federal contractor or SLED organization with a defined boundary, four to eight weeks from kickoff to final report. Larger or more complex environments — multiple business units, hybrid cloud, classified enclaves — run longer.
Will this assessment satisfy our assessor or auditor?
A self-assessment performed by Cleared Systems is not the same as a formal third-party assessment, and we'll never represent it that way. But it's the most reliable way to know what a third party will find, and the deliverables are formatted to feed directly into the formal assessment process.
Can you assess against multiple frameworks at once?
Yes. Many clients are accountable to overlapping frameworks — NIST 800-171 plus DFARS plus CMMC, or NIST 800-53 plus FedRAMP plus FISMA. We map findings across frameworks so you don't pay for the same gap analysis three times.
What happens after the assessment?
You get the report and the roadmap. From there it's your call: take it in-house and execute remediation, contract us to do the remediation, or contract us for ongoing program support through retainer. There's no automatic upsell — the assessment stands on its own.
Ready to Know Where You Stand
You can't make defensible compliance decisions on assumptions. Request a quote for a Federal or SLED risk assessment and we'll scope an engagement that produces decision-grade output against the framework you're actually accountable to.