Optimal builds, migrates, and manages CMMC-ready Microsoft 365 GCC High enclaves for the defense industrial base — and stands up the governed AI that runs safely inside them. One veteran-owned partner for the compliant cloud and the intelligence on top of it.
GCC High enclave / CMMC readiness / Governed AI / Red team
Engineered and measured to the standards that gate production AI
Optimal, LLC is a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business — SBA-certified and eligible for veteran set-aside contracts.
Optimal gives the defense industrial base a compliant place to operate — and the governed AI to operate faster inside it. The sovereign cloud and the intelligence on top of it, from one veteran-owned partner.
We stand up your Microsoft 365 GCC High tenant, migrate your people and data into it, engineer the NIST 800-171 controls, and run it for you — so you stay eligible to win and keep DoD work that touches CUI or ITAR-controlled data.
Most GCC High shops stop at email and files. We stand up governed access to the frontier models authorized for your sovereign cloud — one gateway, fail-closed guardrails, a defensible audit trail — plus assessment and red-teaming of the AI you deploy.
If you handle CUI or ITAR-controlled data on a DoD contract, you need a sovereign environment that meets DFARS 252.204-7012 and CMMC Level 2. Optimal stands up your Microsoft 365 GCC High enclave, migrates you into it, engineers the controls, and manages it — so compliance stops being the thing that costs you the contract. See the full managed service →
A compliant Microsoft 365 GCC High tenant — Entra ID, Conditional Access, Defender, and Purview configured to a CUI-ready baseline from day one.
Mailboxes, files, Teams, and identities moved from Commercial or GCC into GCC High with spillage controls — no CUI left in the wrong boundary.
The NIST SP 800-171 control set implemented and documented — SSP and POA&M, evidence collected, ready for your C3PAO's CMMC Level 2 assessment.
Ongoing administration, patching, monitoring, user lifecycle, and help desk — the managed operations that keep the enclave compliant after go-live.
GCC High G5 licensing and provisioning included. Optimal prepares and manages the environment; the certified CMMC assessment is performed independently by your C3PAO.
Most teams meet AI security through a checklist. We start from the adversary — how a prompt gets injected, how a model leaks its own context, how an agent is talked into acting outside its lane. Compliance frameworks are where we finish, engineering targets we build toward, never where we begin.
Expertise leads every engagement. We use AI and our own open-source tooling to move faster, but the judgment — what to test, what a finding means, what to build — stays human. We don't hand you a product and walk away. We scope to your stack, your risk, and your environment, and leave you able to run what we build.
Assess it the way an adversary would. Prove the failure. Engineer the controls that stop it. Keep the whole program governed. Engagements are scoped to your stack — most run four to eight weeks.
A structured evaluation of the AI systems you're putting into production — models, prompts, retrieval, tool calls, identities, and the plumbing around them. We map the attack paths an adversary would actually take, not a control checklist.
Deliverable Findings mapped to the OWASP LLM Top 10 and MITRE ATLAS, ranked attack narratives with reproduction steps, prioritized remediation, and a retest.
Offensive, hands-on testing of AI-enabled systems and agents. We operate the way an adversary would, then show you exactly how a failure happens — and the specific control that closes it.
Deliverable Reproducible attack chains with evidence, impact rated to your environment, and the control that would have stopped each one.
Our signature engagement. We design and stand up the access layer for AI in the cloud you already license — Azure, AWS, GCP, or GovCloud — built on our open-source Zero Trust reference architecture.
Deliverable A governed, self-hostable control plane you own and operate — no SDK rewrite, no vendor lock-in, no new accreditation boundary.
Help your teams adopt AI without flying blind. Engineering-grounded guidance scoped to your risk profile and grounded in real attack paths — not paperwork.
Deliverable Your people know the guardrails and why they exist; you get the evidence they held.
A working method, not a black box. You see the attack surface as we map it, the findings as we prove them, and the fixes as they close.
We define the systems in play, the data they touch, the threat model that actually matters to you, and the rules of engagement. The scope is written to your stack — not lifted from a template.
We inventory every way in and out: models, prompts, retrieval sources, tools and functions, identities, credentials, and egress paths. You can't secure what hasn't been mapped.
We run the OWASP LLM Top 10 and MITRE ATLAS techniques against your systems — injection, extraction, manipulation, abuse-case chains — and document what works, with evidence.
Ranked findings, reproduction steps, business impact, and specific remediation — written for the engineers who fix it and the leaders who own the risk.
We help close the findings, then prove they're closed. The engagement ends with evidence, not a backlog of open items.
The reference pattern behind our Governed AI Engineering work — the same open-source Zero Trust design we stand up in your environment. Read the architecture ↗
Cloudflare Access · Okta OIDC
Authenticate the caller, then check the request against a model and resource allowlist. No token is issued for a model you haven't approved.
NeMo Guardrails · PII/secret detectors
Inline detection on prompt and response — injection, jailbreak, PII/DLP, secret exfiltration — fail-closed and pre-call. A blocked request never reaches the provider.
LiteLLM keys · Squid egress
Proxy to the approved model — commercial, GovCloud, or self-hosted — through per-key virtual credentials, with egress pinned to a default-deny allowlist.
Structured JSON · Postgres
Write a structured audit row joined by request ID — the artifact your reviewers read directly, on your retention, in your account.
No wrapper, no SDK rewrite — point your existing OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible client at the gateway and every call is governed and logged.
You don’t need a new vendor to reach frontier models safely. If you already run Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, or Google Cloud, Optimal stands up governed, audited access to the frontier models in the cloud you already license — the same authenticated gateway, guardrails, and defensible audit trail. Built for enterprises and for all of SLED: state, local, and education.
Reach for the models in the cloud you already pay for — or self-host them. Either way, every call runs through one governed boundary with a defensible audit trail.
Route agents and users to approved models with a full audit trail. Every request authorized, every token logged — without standing up a new accreditation boundary.
Regulated cloud →Self-host the gateway and models where nothing leaves the wire. Default-deny egress is structural, not a checkbox — the same control bands, fully disconnected.
On-prem & air-gapped →Per-key identity and rate limits, model and tool allowlists, and an audit of every call an agent makes — so autonomy never means unaccountable.
Agentic workloads →Optimal does two things that work together. First, we build, migrate, and manage CMMC-ready Microsoft 365 GCC High enclaves for the defense industrial base — the sovereign environment you need to handle CUI and ITAR-controlled data on DoD contracts. Second, we stand up the governed AI that runs safely inside those environments, and assess and red-team the AI systems teams deploy. We're an SBA-certified Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB).
GCC High is a US-sovereign version of Microsoft 365, physically and logically isolated, with US data residency and screened US-person support. If you're a defense contractor handling Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) or ITAR/export-controlled data, GCC High is the environment built to support the DFARS 252.204-7012 and CMMC Level 2 obligations in your contracts. Optimal stands the enclave up and runs it for you.
No environment makes you compliant on its own — CMMC Level 2 is a third-party assessment against the 110 NIST SP 800-171 controls. What GCC High gives you is a foundation built for those controls. Optimal implements and documents the control set inside your enclave (SSP and POA&M), collects the evidence, and gets you assessment-ready. The certified assessment itself is performed independently by an accredited C3PAO — we prepare the environment, we don't grade it.
Advisory-led. We deliver engagements, not a SaaS subscription. The control pattern we implement is published as an open-source Zero Trust reference architecture — so you can read exactly what we build before we build it, and keep operating it yourself afterward.
We test real attack paths — prompt injection, model and context manipulation, data and secret extraction, and abuse-case simulation — scoped to your specific environment and risk profile rather than a generic checklist. Findings are measured against the OWASP LLM Top 10 and MITRE ATLAS and come with the evidence and the fix.
Prompt injection manipulates an AI system through crafted input, causing it to ignore its instructions, expose data, or take actions it shouldn't. It's one of the most active threats facing any organization deploying large language models and agents — and one of the first things we test.
We build practical, engineering-grounded usage patterns, threat models, and secure-adoption roadmaps tied to real-world risk. We review how AI is actually being used, identify where data and access are exposed, and give your teams guardrails they can follow — so adoption moves fast without moving blind.
Yes, and it's often the fastest path. We build governed, audited access to the frontier models already available in the cloud you license — Azure OpenAI Service, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Vertex AI — so your teams reach them safely without a new vendor or procurement. It's available to enterprises and to all of SLED (state, local, and education), as well as federal teams.
Yes. Optimal is an SBA-certified Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), eligible for SDVOSB and VOSB set-aside contracts, and works with federal agencies, SLED (state, local, and education) entities, and enterprises. We deliver across GovCloud, commercial cloud (Azure, AWS, GCP), on-prem, and fully air-gapped networks.
“We don’t hand you a scan and walk away. We show you how an adversary gets in, engineer the controls that stop them, and leave you the evidence that they held.”
Tell us your environment, the models you’re adopting, and where you’re worried. We’ll scope an engagement — assessment, red team, governed engineering, or advisory — across GovCloud, on-prem, or air-gapped.
Book a scoping call →