Army Unveils Cybersecurity Pilot Program for Small Businesses

The U.S. Army has launched a pilot program designed to help small businesses in the defense industrial base meet cybersecurity requirements.

The Army said Wednesday the Next-Gen Commercial Operations in Defended Enclaves pilot, or N-CODE, will merge commercial cloud offerings with enhanced security features to provide small enterprises with a secure environment to store, communicate and process sensitive data.

With N-CODE, small businesses can use an initial set of productivity tools that could help them meet most of the security controls under the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program.

DOD News reported that the Army is allocating approximately $26 million in fiscal year 2025 and FY 2026 funds for the N-CODE pilot program.

“This essentially provides a cyber-secure enclave in a secure environment for small businesses to participate in where they can collaborate, share information, [and] most importantly, do their own work that they need to that would otherwise present a threat vector for actors that we know are very active in the cybersecurity space,” Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo said of the pilot during a discussion at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting Tuesday.

“What’s great about it is [that] it is compliant with CMMC, so all of the department’s requirements would be met by operating in this environment,” Camarillo added.