TL;DR: Achieving and maintaining FedRAMP and DISA STIG compliance is time-consuming, especially when manual processes are involved. Crucible by Dido Solutions addresses this by integrating compliance directly into your DevSecOps pipeline. It automates configuration assessments, enforces security baselines early in the development cycle, and continuously monitors for drift—all while aligning with evolving federal standards. This means faster ATOs, fewer compliance bottlenecks, and a scalable path to secure cloud operations.
Estimated Read Time: 4–5 minutes
DevSecOps teams face a growing compliance burden: every VM or system must meet hardening baselines (DISA STIGs for DoD systems or FedRAMP/NIST controls for cloud) and auditors demand evidence. Traditional processes are manual and brittle. Configuration drift quickly erodes compliance, and without automated tracking there’s no easy audit trail. Systems that were compliant on Monday can be non-compliant by Friday as settings slip out of lockstep . Likewise, manual STIG application and spot-check audits consume vast effort – often delaying Authority to Operate (ATO) approvals for months. For example, the DoD and FedRAMP programs now mandate continuous monitoring of security controls; FedRAMP explicitly requires cloud service providers to “continuously monitor the cloud service offering to detect changes in the security posture” for risk-based decisions . In practice this means teams must automate compliance or fall behind.
- Configuration Drift: Systems change over time (patches, updates, user changes), breaking manual baselines .
- Lack of Audit Trails: Without versioned infrastructure code, there is no definitive record of who changed what. Auditors demand a “complete audit history and traceability” of security changes , but manual edits go unlogged.
- Inconsistent STIG Enforcement: Applying hundreds of STIG requirements by hand leads to uneven coverage. One server may implement a setting and another miss it, causing compliance gaps. As Puppet notes, manual STIG management “can be a very daunting task” at scale, with constant “catchup” efforts .
- Extended ATO Cycles: Manually generating evidence and remediating findings delays ATO grants. Automating STIG validation is key – the DoD’s MITRE SAF project emphasizes that streamlining STIG compliance “accelerate[s] the path to ATO” by removing process friction .
These challenges demand a platform approach. Crucible leverages Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and policy-as-code to codify compliance baselines, integrate STIG controls into VM builds, and automate checks across the pipeline. In this way, Crucible acts as a one-stop DevSecOps compliance solution, improving both security posture and time-to-compliance.
Infrastructure-as-Code: Enforcing Immutable Baselines
Crucible treats the infrastructure blueprint itself as code. Teams write and store VM deployment templates, security policies, and hardening rules in a version-controlled repository. Every environment is built from these codified baselines, preventing “snowflake” drift. For example, CI/CD pipelines in Crucible use IaC modules to pre-define VM configurations that meet DISA STIG or FedRAMP controls. Puppet observes that “configuration automation using policy as code (PaC) can keep IT configurations in a desired state that complies with relevant DISA STIGs” . In practice, this means that a VM AMI or cloud VM image is generated with all STIG settings applied; developers and operators never deploy a host that hasn’t passed the coded policies.
In practice, Crucible continuously scans and assesses every VM against the codified baselines. As one whitepaper explains, automated compliance tools “continuously scan and assess your infrastructure for compliance against … DISA STIGs, reducing manual audits and ensuring consistent adherence to industry-standard policies” . By integrating these scans into the CI/CD workflow, Crucible enforces guardrails early (shift-left) and rejects non-compliant changes before they reach production. The AWS DevOps blog similarly notes that a “continuous compliance workflow” uses CI/CD patterns to introduce guardrails based on organizational policies, so that non-compliant changes are caught and remediated before deployment . In effect, IaC makes infrastructure immutable and repeatable: every deployment mirrors the codified secure template, eliminating ad-hoc variation.
- Write security baselines as code: Teams embed CIS benchmarks or STIG rules directly in Terraform/CloudFormation or Packer scripts.
- Build hardened images: Crucible automates the creation of STIG-compliant VM images (golden AMIs) with the baseline baked in.
- Gate deployments with policy: Pipelines break if the IaC templates or their outputs violate a control, so only compliant configs are deployed .
By defining compliance in code, Crucible ensures that all VMs start from a known-good state. Any drift from this state is not accidental but flagged immediately for remediation.
Codifying DISA STIG Baselines into VM Builds
A critical feature of Crucible is integrating DISA STIG requirements directly into virtual machine builds and deployments. Each STIG contains hundreds of specific checks (file permissions, patch levels, service settings, etc.), which Crucible translates into automation. For instance, Crucible can import DISA STIG XML checklists into its build process (similar to tools like Ansible+OpenSCAP), automatically applying each recommendation. Puppet notes that STIG compliance “can be automated” by combining infrastructure automation with configuration management: with policy-as-code, Crucible keeps all systems in compliance with the relevant DISA STIGs .
Practically, this means when a new VM is provisioned, Crucible’s IaC pipeline automatically hardens it: it disables unneeded services, sets secure registry settings, applies firewall rules, and enforces user policies exactly as the STIG mandates. After provisioning, Crucible runs automated STIG scanners (such as CIS-CAT or InSpec profiles) that verify every setting. Any failed controls are logged and (optionally) auto-remediated. In this way, even an environment requiring air-gapped operation can have its STIGs built into the image, giving operators consistent, pre-hardened VMs from day one.
Auditability and Version Control
Crucible’s entire compliance workflow lives in Git or another version-control system, providing a full audit trail of every change. Unlike manual scripts or ad-hoc edits, IaC code and policy definitions are checked into source control. Every modification – who changed a firewall rule, when an operating system was updated, or which STIG was added – is recorded in the commit history. This means auditors can trace exactly when a security control was introduced or altered. The SEI/CMU DevSecOps guidance emphasizes that a DevSecOps pipeline “enables a complete audit history and traceability of previously approved security changes,” giving authorizing officials confidence that any deviations are caught .
Moreover, Crucible can enforce pull-request reviews and approvals as part of its workflows. Before new IaC code or STIG updates are merged, compliance officers or team leads can review the proposed changes. The review comments and approval records become part of the project history – effectively an electronic “paper trail” of all compliance modifications. As one security vendor put it, such automated enforcement “proves compliance with automated paper trails,” greatly simplifying audit prep . In short, version control turns the compliance process into documented code changes, rather than mysterious system tweaks.
Automated Detection and Baseline Integration for Remediation
Once systems are live, Crucible continuously assesses them against codified compliance baselines, identifying configuration drift and cyber hygiene issues early. Rather than directly performing auto-remediation, Crucible acts as the authoritative source of truth—detecting deviations from baseline and integrating with tools capable of enforcement, such as Ansible, Nessus, or other CM/VA platforms. By exporting or synchronizing these baselines into compatible remediation tools, Crucible enables a scalable “find & fix” ecosystem across the enterprise.
For instance, Crucible can export a STIG-compliant profile that tools like Ansible use to reapply hardened settings, or it can flag vulnerabilities discovered through Nessus scanning for follow-up remediation workflows. In this model, Crucible continuously detects violations (e.g., missing patches, misconfigured registry keys, or noncompliant file permissions) and feeds that intelligence to remediation pipelines. This keeps the environment aligned to the desired secure state without performing the enforcement itself.
Puppet explicitly notes that without this kind of automated baseline enforcement, teams may find themselves compliant “today but not tomorrow” as systems drift out of policy. With Crucible in the loop, the full remediation lifecycle is coordinated—even if the correction itself is handled downstream. The result is a highly responsive compliance workflow where configuration changes are caught quickly, and approved fixes are reapplied through trusted enforcement tools. Over time, this dramatically reduces audit overhead and supports a posture of continuous compliance: security teams are no longer reacting to surprises, but proactively managing compliance drift in near real time.
Consistent Compliance Across the Environment
Crucible doesn’t just protect a subset of servers – it applies uniform compliance policies to every part of the infrastructure. Whether workloads run on Windows VMs, Linux instances, public-cloud images, or even on-premise hypervisors, the same codified baselines apply. This avoids the typical situation where, for example, a Linux team implements one set of controls and the Windows team a different one. Instead, Crucible’s policy-as-code approach ensures single-pane governance. For instance, a security rule added to the IaC baseline (such as “disk encryption must be enabled”) automatically applies across all VM images everywhere.
In short, Crucible “enforce[s] seamless compliance across operating systems and deployment environments” . Puppet’s IaC model makes this easy: writing the hardening rules once means Puppet can “assess servers and entire systems against the recommendations laid out in DISA STIGs” on any platform . Teams gain confidence that a cloud VM is just as locked-down as a data-center server. Crucible also supports air-gapped or disconnected networks by baking policies into images ahead of time. This cross-environment consistency is key for large agencies or enterprises with thousands of systems: one change in the codebase instantly propagates everywhere, eliminating variability.
Crucible as the One-Stop Compliance Platform
Taken together, these features make Crucible a unified DevSecOps compliance solution. Crucible embeds security controls into the build/deploy pipeline, provides full traceability, and automatically corrects problems – all from a single dashboard. Key benefits include:
- Infrastructure as Code Baselines: All VM builds and infrastructure templates are defined in code, so every deployment starts from an approved, compliant state . Drift is prevented from the outset.
- Integrated STIG/FedRAMP Checks: DISA STIG and FedRAMP controls are codified into the pipeline. Crucible can run those checks (via tools like InSpec or CIS-CAT) as part of CI/CD, shifting validation left and eliminating manual checklist work.
- Audit-Ready Version Control: Changes to infrastructure and policies live in Git (or similar), providing an auditable history of every configuration update . Review logs, commit diffs, and linked tickets become evidence.
- Continuous Monitoring & Self-Remediation: Crucible constantly scans running VMs and automatically remediates any deviation . Non-compliant systems are either rebuilt or fixed according to policy, keeping environments locked down.
- Multi-Environment Coverage: The same compliance rules apply to all OSes and clouds. A baseline pushed in Crucible cascades across Windows, Linux, public and private clouds, data center servers, and even disconnected networks
- Accelerated ATO and Reporting: Because compliance evidence is generated in real time, security teams assemble audit reports instantly. MITRE notes that automating STIG compliance “accelerate[s] the path to ATO” by smoothing workflow and reducing manual evidence collection . Crucible can produce compliance reports on demand, showing exactly how each control is met in every system.
In summary, Crucible streamlines the compliance workflow. It codifies baselines, enforces them automatically, and documents every change – all in one platform. For compliance officers, this means more confidence and less paperwork. Security posture improves (fewer vulnerabilities slip through) and audits become routine checks of system logs rather than crisis events. In practice, agencies and enterprises adopting such IaC-based compliance see dramatically faster time-to-authorize, since so much of the control evidence is built into the process. Crucible thus serves as a single-pane DevSecOps solution that turns the compliance model on its head: instead of chasing non-compliance after the fact, the organization is continuously compliant by design.
Sources:
- Modern DevSecOps and Compliance Automation Practices emphasize Infrastructure as Code,
- Policy-as-Code
- Continuous Monitoring
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