The Knox Approach

2 min read
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Knox has the most ATOs, the most flexible architecture, and the cheapest and fastest time-to-FedRAMP.

How does Knox Compare to the competition? 

  1. Fastest and Cheapest Time-to-ATO
    • Knox can secure an ATO in as fast as 90 days. How? Knox has invested in creating the largest boundary in the market across all AWS, Azure, GCP, and all major LLMS, allowing us to quickly map your architecture to our existing cloud.
  2. Most ATOs
    • Knox has 13 ATOs, far surpassing competitors.
    • With 9 years of FedRAMP approvals, Knox has more experience than competitors, ensuring a smoother, proven process.
  3. Most Flexible Architecture
    • Infrastructure Agnostic Deploy: Deploy apps using Containerized, Microservice, Serverless or any other architecture. Knox does not require containerization.

In short, Knox offers the most ATOs, the fastest process, and the best cost-to-value ratio, making it the strongest choice in the market.

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The Knox Approach

product
00 min read
 — 
March 15, 2025

Knox has the most ATOs, the most flexible architecture, and the cheapest and fastest time-to-FedRAMP.

How does Knox Compare to the competition? 

  1. Fastest and Cheapest Time-to-ATO
    • Knox can secure an ATO in as fast as 90 days. How? Knox has invested in creating the largest boundary in the market across all AWS, Azure, GCP, and all major LLMS, allowing us to quickly map your architecture to our existing cloud.
  2. Most ATOs
    • Knox has 13 ATOs, far surpassing competitors.
    • With 9 years of FedRAMP approvals, Knox has more experience than competitors, ensuring a smoother, proven process.
  3. Most Flexible Architecture
    • Infrastructure Agnostic Deploy: Deploy apps using Containerized, Microservice, Serverless or any other architecture. Knox does not require containerization.

In short, Knox offers the most ATOs, the fastest process, and the best cost-to-value ratio, making it the strongest choice in the market.

Trust Telemetry: How KNOX CMX Collects and Correlates Evidence for Always-On Audit Readiness

product
00 min read
 — 
May 23, 2025

Audit season shouldn’t feel like DEFCON 1.
And yet, for most SaaS teams, it still does:

Manually collecting logs
Updating out-of-sync SSPs
Scrambling to find screenshots
Wasting hours proving what already happened

At Knox Systems, we believe evidence shouldn’t be something you gather.
It should be something your system emits—automatically.

That’s why we built the Knox CMX with a concept we call Trust Telemetry.

What Is Trust Telemetry?

Trust Telemetry is the Knox CMX’s ability to continuously capture, timestamp, and correlate real-time control evidence—directly from your infrastructure.

It’s how we turn compliance from a checklist into a data stream.

CMX integrates with:

  • CI/CD pipelines

  • GitOps workflows

  • Container orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes, ECS, Nomad)

  • Cloud provider APIs (AWS, Azure, GCP)

  • Logging + monitoring tools (CloudTrail, Datadog, Fluentd, etc.)

Everything becomes a source of verified evidence—linked to your control graph and automatically audit-ready.

How CMX Validates Controls with Real-Time Evidence

Instead of waiting for a quarterly review, CMX validates your controls as you deploy.

Here’s how:

  1. Detects a control trigger (e.g., policy applied, user onboarded, service provisioned)

  2. Captures artifacts (e.g., Git commit, deployment log, policy config, system event)

  3. Timestamps and hashes the artifact

  4. Links it to the relevant NIST 800-53 control

  5. Stores it in your compliance graph and audit ledger

  6. Surfaces it in SSPs, POA&Ms, and dashboards automatically

No screenshots. No drag-and-drop folders. Just real-time compliance evidence that audits itself.

Example: Evidence for SC-12 (Cryptographic Key Establishment)

Traditional method:

  • Screenshot from AWS console

  • Separate document explaining key policy

  • Manually written SSP language

With CMX:

  • Pulls encryption settings from IaC + runtime

  • Captures KMS key usage logs

  • Hashes policy object + commit ID

  • Links all to SC-12 in the compliance graph

  • Writes evidence into OSCAL-formatted SSP in seconds
Audit Readiness Is Now Continuous

With Trust Telemetry, your compliance posture becomes:

Real-time
Inspectable
Immutable
Always up to date

3PAOs don’t have to ask for evidence.
You already have it—linked, validated, and ready to submit.

TL;DR

Evidence is no longer something you gather under pressure.
With CMX, it’s something your system emits naturally—every time you ship.

Connects to your real dev workflow
Collects + correlates real-time artifacts
Ties every piece of evidence to specific controls
Powers always-on, audit-ready documentation

Manual audit prep is out.
Trust Telemetry is in.

Let’s move from compliance-as-ritual to compliance-as-signal with Knox.

The End of the Security Checkbox: What Federal Buyers Really Want from SaaS Vendors in 2025

product
00 min read
 — 
April 14, 2025

For years, security in federal procurement was all about one thing:

“Do you have a FedRAMP ATO?”

But in 2025, that checkbox doesn’t carry the weight it used to.

Why? Because FedRAMP alone isn’t enough anymore.
Agencies are under pressure to move faster, reduce risk sooner, and prove continuous security—not just point-in-time compliance.

At Knox Systems, we’re seeing a new standard emerge:
Evidence-first trust
Real-time posture transparency
Security by design, not by checklist

What Federal Buyers Really Want Now

Procurement teams are no longer satisfied with "ATO or not."
They’re asking smarter questions:

Can you show real-time compliance status?
Is your infrastructure monitored continuously?
How fast can you remediate security drift?
Can we see your SSP in OSCAL?
Are your controls automated or manual?

They want signals of maturity, not marketing slides.

New Trust Signals Replacing the Checkbox

Here’s what matters more than a framed ATO certificate:

1. Evidence Readiness

Buyers want instant access to validated artifacts:

  • Log trails

  • Access records

  • Config snapshots

  • Control implementation detail

  • Auto-generated POA&Ms and SSPs in OSCAL

With CMX, all of this is live, exportable, and tied to the right control in real time.

2. Posture Dashboards

Can you show your compliance health right now, not last quarter?

CMX gives vendors a living dashboard that:

  • Maps controls to evidence

  • Tracks inherited vs. owned responsibility

  • Flags drift and unresolved risks

  • Is always 3PAO- and agency-ready

This is what buyers use to triage and trust.

3. Security by Design

It’s no longer enough to bolt on a FedRAMP package after launch.

SaaS vendors are now evaluated on:

  • Infrastructure segmentation

  • Access governance

  • How compliance integrates into CI/CD

  • Whether remediation is manual or automated

This is why Knox’s shared boundary and Knox CMX are so powerful:
You don’t just meet requirements—you’re built for trust.

This Shift Is Good News

If you’re a fast-moving SaaS company that:

Automates control coverage
Inherits hardened infrastructure
Has real-time evidence and dashboards
Builds with GRC in the pipeline

Then you’re already more trustworthy than legacy players who took 3 years to pass a FedRAMP checklist.

This is your competitive edge.

TL;DR

FedRAMP is still important—but it’s no longer the whole story.

Federal buyers are prioritizing real-time posture, automated controls, and actionable visibility
Evidence readiness and trust telemetry win more than slow-moving ATOs
Knox and CMX give you all of that—out of the box

Checkbox compliance is out.
Intelligent, transparent security is in.

Let’s show the government what modern SaaS really looks like.