How we help you
Cyber risk is evolving fast, and the cost of inaction is higher than ever. From 24/7 monitoring and data recovery to threat analysis and simulations, Wipfli’s holistic cybersecurity services can help proactively protect your business.
Develop a cybersecurity strategy that keeps pace with the latest cyberthreats.
Evaluate your program against security frameworks and compliance regulations.
Get managed security services for continuous, proactive defense.
Be better prepared to respond to and recover from incidents.
Test your defenses and identify vulnerabilities before attackers.
Fortify defenses and increase resilience
Whether it’s for strategy, testing or fully outsourced cyber services, our national cybersecurity team delivers up-to-date solutions scaled to meet your needs.
Explore our services
Understand your current risks related to external hacks, unauthorized access, ransomware, business interruption and data or money theft.
See how your cybersecurity matches up against security frameworks, such as NIST and CSF, as well as industry-specific best practices and compliance regulations.
Be proactive about responsible AI use with Wipfli’s support for assessing AI-related security risks. Our services include AI policy development, least privilege access reviews and cloud security reviews across platforms. We also provide AI training and help teams recognize and respond to AI-driven threats such as phishing, ransomware and deepfakes.
When you give our team access to your systems, cloud environments and applications, we help identify where you may be vulnerable to exploitation so that you can keep your data secure and access tightly controlled.
We simulate real-world attacks through tactics such as penetration testing and social engineering to evaluate the strength of your network, systems and web applications. Our services include external testing to identify vulnerabilities from outside threats, internal testing to assess vulnerabilities if a breach occurs and web or mobile app testing to uncover vulnerabilities in code or databases.
Strengthen defenses with a mix of security controls tailored to your risk profile. We help you leverage tools including authentication (MFA), advanced endpoint detection and response (EDR), immutable data backup and mobile device management (MDM) to protect data and support long-term resilience.
We help organizations strengthen their resilience to cyberattacks by developing actionable continuity and incident response programs. Our services include business impact analysis (BIA), recoverability assessments and tailored business impact planning. We also support ongoing plan maintenance.
Increase trust and meet regulatory requirements with a virtual chief information security officer (vCISO). Wipfli’s outsourced CISO services provide strategy, oversight and executive reporting on a fractional basis.
Combine the power of our 24/7 monitoring, detection and response support into a managed security services package that provides high-touch, fast-moving and budget-conscious protection. We also offer DNS filtering, security information and event management (SIEM), cloud security and dark web monitoring to help safeguard your environment and proactively defend against emerging threats.
Navigate regulatory requirements with confidence. We specialize in FFIEC, NAIC, CMMC, HIPAA and PCI, and can tailor our guidance to industries, including healthcare, manufacturing and financial institutions.
Attack simulations validate that your prevention, detection and response security controls are performing as intended and delivering an optimal return on investment. By emulating real-world malware, ransomware and financial threat actor activity, we help you identify security coverage gaps and assess if your internal and third-party security vendors are protecting your organization and delivering real-time value.
Secure your cloud environment by implementing tailored strategies that help protect sensitive data, maintain regulatory compliance and mitigate the risk of cyberthreats. Through our assessments, cloud architecture design and ongoing monitoring, we empower organizations to confidently operate in the cloud with resilience and trust.
Insights and Resources
ARTICLE
Bet big on construction technology
Construction companies that want to make big bets on construction technology need to accept one uncomfortable truth: some of those bets are going to fail. That’s not a flaw in the strategy. It’s something you need to lean into. Risk management is fundamental to construction. It protects margins, keeps projects on track and keeps the business healthy. But when risk aversion governs every technology decision, it can quietly kill your upside. Why avoiding technology risks holds you back Most construction leaders want evidence before committing to a new platform or initiative. They want to understand the return, minimize employee disruption and avoid investing in something that doesn’t deliver. That’s reasonable, but it limits opportunities to win big. A mentality that’s overly focused on mitigating risk makes companies reluctant to pursue anything with an uncertain outcome. And the opportunities with the greatest potential are often the ones that can’t guarantee an upfront return. Here’s a contradiction worth pondering: many of the same owners running conservative internal technology budgets are actively seeking venture investments and alternative private opportunities outside the business. They’re looking at deals with real upside and real risk, such as startups and private companies. Some owners with meaningful annual income are talking to their money managers about getting beyond typical index funds and getting into alternative investment vehicles — like investing in the next hot startup. If they’re comfortable taking bigger swings outside of the firm, why not within it? What it really means to bet big Is your firm willing to make a big bet? Venture investing means accepting that some investments will crash and burn. By definition, venture is about taking swings big enough that you’ll fail as often as you succeed, if not more. The strategy can work because the investments that do succeed hit big. A true big-bet mentality requires accepting uncertainty. For construction companies, that means giving technology and operations leaders room to experiment with initiatives that might fail while staying focused on identifying those capable of creating outsized value. Betting big on construction technology doesn’t mean taking risks with live projects or threatening core operations. It means carving out space for deliberate experimentation. Approach technology and AI initiatives as a portfolio rather than expecting each one to succeed. When an initiative doesn’t work, there’s still value in learning what doesn’t fit your organization. You’ll make a more informed call on the next investment. Which construction technology bets are worth making? Accepting more uncertainty doesn’t mean making random investments. Construction leaders can develop a clear lens for deciding which opportunities are worth betting on by considering these four criteria when assessing technologies: Employee experience: Could it improve how your people work or strengthen your ability to attract and retain talent? Labor is one of construction’s most persistent challenges; solving for it has ripple effects. If you’re focused on improving talent attraction and retention, you’re mitigating challenges that would have otherwise surfaced later. Data and AI readiness: What are you doing to connect your systems or improve the data foundation that makes it easier for AI to work for you? A data warehouse like Snowflake is one example of a technology initiative that strengthens that foundation. Skills and process development: Not every investment has to be software. Business process mapping and SOP development tend to have outsized benefits. You want to be consistent and give AI a better understanding of what’s unique about how you operate. Learning potential: Even if the initiative doesn’t succeed, could the effort teach you something that makes the next decision sharper? The objective isn’t to remove uncertainty. It’s to take purposeful risks rather than random ones. Does your culture match your tech strategy? Commit to a culture that enables innovation and doesn’t penalize the first person whose experiment doesn’t work. Picture a technology leader at a firm who spends a year testing three new initiatives that are backed by leadership. Two show promise. One falls flat. At the annual review, that failure is a mark against their performance. The message lands clearly: experimentation is only welcome when it succeeds. This will stifle a culture of innovation. If calculated risk-taking is genuinely part of your strategy, it’s important that your job descriptions, hiring criteria and performance management reflect that. A responsible experiment that doesn’t succeed can’t be treated the same as poor performance. Learn from technology failures This requires a real shift in how you define success. Not every experiment will scale across the company, and not every initiative will result in an immediate productivity boost. There’s value in learning from those outcomes and building a culture that’s resilient to software and other tech launches that don’t go as planned. A disappointing rollout shouldn’t set back your technology strategy for years. If you treat it as part of an ongoing process of testing, learning and adapting, it’s a source of data. To keep failure survivable, experimentation shouldn’t put active projects at risk. The goal is a deliberate process that lets you test ideas in a way that’s safe to learn from. What success looks like Success isn’t batting a thousand on your technology experiments. Success is pivoting your organization from one averse to technology and change to one with an innovative culture that is open to trying new things. Even if initiatives aren’t guaranteed to produce financial returns, the whole organization understands you’re capable of thinking big. Make room for bigger swings Technology and AI are opening new possibilities for how construction companies operate. But not every new tool comes with guaranteed returns. Companies that demand certainty from every experiment may be the ones standing still when a competitor’s bigger bet pays off. Build experimentation into the strategy while maintaining a clear line between the risks you need to control and the risks worth taking. Strengthen your data and technology foundation to improve the odds of success. Choose purposeful bets and give your people room to try things. Focus on extracting lessons from projects that don’t work. Remember, if your big bets are never allowed to fail, are they even bets? Watch our construction technology webinar Watch our webinar, What’s worth the risk? Driving ROI with construction technology , for a deeper dive into technology decisions. You will learn from Wipfli’s construction and technology leaders about: What’s real and what’s hype in construction technology The risks leaders should be willing to take Why technology initiatives succeed or fail How to avoid chasing every shiny new tool When to invest and when to optimize How waiting for ROI could limit your innovation Read more Cybersecurity in construction: How CIOs can better protect their firms Construction technology ROI: How to measure and maximize your investment Construction technology management: How to Improve performance and alignment
ARTICLE
Intelligent UI for construction
Learn how construction leaders can use Intelligent UI to access key data quickly in an easy-to-read format.
ARTICLE
How to prepare for CMMC readiness requirements
Many contractors and third-party vendors who work with the Department of Defense (DoD) must comply with Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) readiness requirements. This set of processes and practices is designed to strengthen organizations connected to the DoD (sometimes informally called the Department of War) against cybersecurity threats by protecting controlled unclassified information (CUI) and federal contract information (FCI). CMMC is currently undergoing a major review, as some key third-party assessment requirements were recently paused by the DoD. However, CMMC rules remain largely in effect and continue to be included in DoD contracts. Here’s what you need to know from a readiness standpoint. What are the CMMC 2.0 requirements? The CMMC 2.0 framework requires that DoD contractors — officially any organization that’s part of the defense industrial base (DIB) — meet certain cybersecurity standards. If you want to do business with the DoD, you’ll need to be CMMC compliant . Maintaining compliance includes identifying whether your company meets one of three CMMC levels based on your degree of exposure to CUI, implementing relevant controls and safeguards and passing regular assessments. Here are the three CMMC levels: Level 1: Foundational cybersecurity for any federal contractors who handle FCI. Level 2: More advanced security standards for organizations that also deal with CUI. Level 3: The highest level of CMMC, meant to protect CUI from advanced threats. Why do you need to achieve CMMC compliance? CMMC exists largely to protect a category of data called CUI. Broadly speaking, CUI is unclassified information that is still sensitive and should be protected for security reasons. All CUI is created by or on behalf of the DoD and is technical information with military or space applications. Where can I find CUI in my organization? Most businesses in the DIB encounter CUI at some point in their work. It can come in many forms like contract documentation, blueprints, schematics, tax information and even some communications. Here are some questions to help you consider where you should look for CUI within your organization: How did we receive the CUI? Who needs to access it in their day-to-day work? Who did we send it to? Where do we store DoD working files and program files? Do we keep hard copies of any documentation for DoD clients or prime contractors? What is the CMMC Phase II pause? CMMC requirements were originally scheduled to be implemented in phases between November 2025 and November 2028. Phase II, which was scheduled to begin in November 2026, would have required that many contractors complete a third-party assessment by a C3PAO (certified third-party assessor organization) to demonstrate Level 2 CMMC compliance to bid on DoD contracts. On July 13, 2026, the DoD announced it was pausing Phase II requirements pending an internal review. That review was scheduled to last for 60 days. However, the pause has continued even after that 60-day period expired in September. For now, other CMMC requirements remain in effect, but DoD contracts cannot require third-party compliance assessments. This leaves self-assessment as the only way to demonstrate compliance. How do you prepare for CMMC compliance? Achieving and maintaining CMMC compliance is a process. Here’s how to get started. 1. Find an advisor to guide you through the process A third-party advisor can help you understand and implement CMMC requirements. This will make the process significantly easier and more successful than trying to do everything internally. Look for an advisor with cybersecurity and compliance experience that’s also a Registered Provider Organization (RPO). An RPO has been security vetted and has also demonstrated a comprehensive understanding of CMMC 2.0 requirements. 2. Conduct a CMMC readiness assessment Next, work with your advisor to assess your organization’s existing cybersecurity preparedness through the lens of CMMC 2.0 compliance. What are you doing right and where are the gaps in your current safeguards or controls? Part of this assessment will be determining how much CUI your organization has in its possession. This understanding will allow you to define your organization’s scope, supporting eventual representations to the government that no CUI data exists outside of it. 3. Implement additional governance structures, controls and safeguards to meet CMMC 2.0 standards Depending on the results of your CMMC readiness assessment, you’ll likely need to make internal changes within your organization to meet new compliance requirements. Your advisor can help you determine specific changes and recommend strategies, processes or systems to implement. 4. Undergo regular assessments You’ll also likely need to undergo regular CMMC assessments in order to maintain compliance and remain eligible to bid on DoD contracts. However, these are self-assessments, as third-party assessment requirements are currently affected by the Phase II pause. Continue to engage with your advisor to make sure you’re prepared for your CMMC assessments so you don’t experience any unexpected surprises that limit your ability to bid on DoD contracts. What else should you know about CMMC readiness? Here’s what else businesses need to know to prepare for CMMC and meet cybersecurity readiness requirements: What is the latest DoD guidance on CMMC? The government’s guidance on CMMC continues to evolve, with the Phase II pause in July 2026 representing the latest significant shift in policy. Your advisor can help you stay on top of any new developments and adapt as needed. Does the commercial item exception apply to my products? Some organizations may benefit from an exception stating that providers of commercial items only need to achieve level one CMMC certification. An RPO can help you determine if this applies to you and help to build your organization’s commercial item representation. What processes or tools do you need to comply with CMMC? CMMC requirements change depending on which of the three levels your business falls under. Before you can determine which processes you need, you’ll first need to determine your level within the CMMC framework. How long does it take to become CMMC compliant? Depending on your CMMC level, achieving compliance will take anywhere from several months to well over a year. The specifics depend on your current cybersecurity readiness, the size and capabilities of your organization, your degree of advisory support and the particular requirements you aim to meet, with Level 3 compliance estimated to take as long as 18 months. Can businesses self-assess CMMC compliance? The Phase II pause means that self-assessment is currently the only option for businesses to demonstrate CMMC compliance. CMMC assessment rules originally required third-party assessments in certain circumstances, including a Level 2 third-party assessment by a C3PAO and a Level 3 third-party assessment by the Defense Contract Management Agency’s (DCMA) Defense Industrial Base Cybersecurity Assessment Center (DIBCAC). However, these requirements are currently paused and under review. Do organizations also need to be compliant with DFARS 252.204-7012 and 7019? The DoD assumes that organizations who are now starting to prepare for CMMC have already achieved compliance with DFARS 252.204-7012 and 7019. If your organization hasn’t done this yet, you’ll need to catch up to where the DoD expects you to be prior to starting your preparations for CMMC. How much does CMMC cost? The DoD has established a rough order of magnitude (ROM) of how much it is expected to cost organizations to achieve CMMC, broken down by size of business and shown as a percentage of annual income. You can find this assessment within the Federal Register Notice for Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) Case 2019-D041 . Note, this ROM assumes the organization is already compliant with DFARS 252.204-7012 and has all the required NIST SP 800-171 controls in place. Are CMMC costs allowable? The DoD understands that organizations will incur costs in preparing for and sustaining CMMC. Fortunately, the DoD has also determined that some of these costs are allowable indirect costs. An RPO can help you understand which costs are allowable and which are unallowable. Read more From compliance to confidence: Mastering the new CMMC requirements The 3 pillars of smarter cybersecurity program management The right cybersecurity framework boosts a business’s value
Reach out to our team
Ready to take a proactive approach to cybersecurity? Our team can help you assess vulnerabilities and keep critical systems secure.
LET'S CONNECT
Discover how Wipfli goes beyond implementation to help you fully leverage the solutions you need to increase efficiency and insights, reduce costs and sustain success.
