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The Guardian is our ongoing, managed security service: continuous monitoring, hardening, access control, and incident response for organizations that carry a compliance or contractual security obligation — not a one-time fix and done. We work from Arlington with organisations across Northern Virginia, Washington DC, and Maryland, and remotely nationwide.
Request Security AuditA security audit is a snapshot: it tells you what's exposed on the day it runs. New CVEs disclose weekly, plugins update, staff join and leave with access that outlives their tenure, and a hardening pass from six months ago is already drifting. Automated scanners probe the internet around the clock — the exposure a one-time review closes today can reopen on its own.
That's the case for ongoing coverage over a single project: continuous monitoring catches the drift between audits, patch management closes new CVEs as they land, and access reviews catch the account nobody remembered to disable. Organizations carrying a compliance obligation — SOC 2, HIPAA, a prime contractor's flow-down clause — need that continuity in writing, not just a report that ages out. It starts with the highest-volume threat: see our guide to phishing protection for small businesses.
We have direct experience building and supporting systems inside HIPAA-regulated healthcare environments. For clients handling patient health information (PHI), we apply encryption, access control, and audit logging practices aligned with HIPAA requirements — and are upfront about what a formal compliance program still requires from your organization.
From gap analysis to technical remediation, we help align your infrastructure and controls with SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 requirements. The audit itself is performed by an independent CPA firm — we prepare you for it, we do not issue reports or certify compliance.
We identify weaknesses before attackers do, through vulnerability scanning and manual review, and provide a prioritized, plain-language roadmap to harden your systems against real-world exploits. Full penetration testing engagements are scoped individually, with a written methodology and report.
Explore Security Audit ServicesWe configure web application firewalls (WAF) and real-time monitoring to filter malicious traffic and reduce the impact of DDoS attempts at the edge, so common attacks stay background noise instead of downtime.
The Guardian's core specializations — from audits to always-on monitoring.
Find and fix vulnerabilities before attackers or auditors do.
e.g., a pre-funding pentest for a fintech startup.
Evidence, policies, and controls in place before the audit window.
e.g., SOC 2 Type II evidence prep for a B2B SaaS vendor.
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configured to stop spoofing and fraud.
e.g., shutting down spoofed-invoice fraud at a real-estate firm.
Alerting and runbooks so problems are caught and contained.
e.g., 24/7 alerting plus a ransomware runbook for a dental group.
MFA, least-privilege, and credential hygiene across the org.
e.g., an MFA rollout and access review across a 40-person agency.
We are based in Arlington, VA and work with organisations throughout Northern Virginia — Alexandria, Falls Church, Fairfax, Tysons, Vienna, McLean, Reston, and Loudoun — as well as Washington DC and the Maryland suburbs. Security work is largely remote by nature, so we also support clients nationwide; the regional presence matters for on-site assessments, office network reviews, and the workshops that go better in person.
This region has an unusual concentration of small companies whose clients, partners, or prime contractors send security questionnaires with contracts attached. Evidence of MFA, documented offboarding, logging, tested backups, and configured email authentication increasingly decides whether a small firm wins work. Most of it is achievable without a security department, and it happens to be the same list that reduces real risk.
Continuous coverage rather than a one-time project: monitoring and alerting, patch and vulnerability management, endpoint protection, identity and access control, email security, backup verification, and a defined path when something does go wrong. It starts from an assessment, because managing risk you have not measured is guesswork.
An audit is a point-in-time answer to "what is exposed right now". Managed security keeps that answer current as staff change, software updates, and new systems appear. Most clients start with an audit and move to ongoing coverage once they have seen the findings — see our security audit services for the scoped review on its own.
We prepare organisations for SOC 2 — gap analysis, control implementation, evidence collection, and policy work. The audit itself must be performed by an independent CPA firm; we do not issue reports or certify compliance, and any provider who says they can should be treated with suspicion.
We advise on readiness as a Cyber AB Registered Practitioner: gap analysis, System Security Plan, POA&M, policies, and assessment preparation. Only a certified assessor at an authorised C3PAO can assess or certify against CMMC. That boundary is a Code of Professional Conduct requirement, not a business preference.
For clients under an ongoing plan we provide incident response guidance — containment, scope assessment, recovery, and the notification questions you will need answered. We are direct about limits: large or legally complex incidents need specialist forensic and legal involvement, and we will tell you when you have reached that point instead of stretching past our competence.
The controls that matter most for a small business are unglamorous and cheap: MFA everywhere, tested backups, prompt offboarding, current patching, and configured email authentication. Together those address the majority of realistic risk. We size the programme to the organisation rather than selling enterprise tooling to a twenty-person company.
Yes. Security work is largely remote by nature, so distance is not a barrier. Our regional concentration is Northern Virginia, DC, and Maryland, where on-site work is also practical.
From small businesses needing a baseline to organizations preparing for an audit — we tell you exactly what we checked, what we fixed, and what's still on you.
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