How Magna5 Simplified Configuration Hardening and Achieved CMMC Level 2 with Senteon

Magna5’s Defense Sector Services, a managed services and cybersecurity provider supporting defense customers, needed a scalable way to manage secure configurations across its CMMC Level 2 environment. The team had built a dedicated defense stack with federal and FedRAMP-authorized tools, but configuration hardening remained a challenge. Traditional STIG-based hardening and manual GPO management created operational friction, required ongoing engineering effort, and made it harder to maintain a clean, repeatable configuration management process.

As Magna5 prepared for its CMMC Level 2 assessment, Bill Osborne and his team used Senteon to simplify system hardening and strengthen audit readiness. Senteon gave the team a centralized way to apply secure configuration baselines, export configuration evidence, and monitor systems for drift.

One of the biggest improvements was flexibility. Magna5 had previously used STIGs for certain application hardening, but some STIG settings created real-world support issues. In one case, Edge hardening blocked certain downloads, which stirred up issues with support staff trying to process digitally signed emails. With Senteon, the team could keep the security baseline intact while tuning specific settings that were too restrictive for their environment.

“We had been relying on STIGs, and they were painful to manage. Senteon gave us a much easier way to maintain secure baselines. “With Senteon, it was easy to tune the baseline so our team could stay secure without blocking people from doing their jobs.”

The Senteon platform helped Magna 5 prepare assessment evidence. Bill’s team pulled configuration exports from Senteon and used them as part of their baseline documentation. This gave the team a clearer way to show how endpoints and servers were configured and how those configurations supported their CMMC readiness.

After achieving CMMC Level 2, Magna5 began using its validated stack as the foundation to  serve defense customers. Senteon helped turn configuration management from a manual burden into a scalable part of its CMMC service delivery model. It reduced hands-on configuration work, improved visibility into baseline compliance, supported audit evidence collection, and gave the team a practical way to maintain hardened systems without breaking day-to-day operations.