A conversation we have often
The prospect

"It's too expensive."

CloudByte

But what's more expensive — the price, or the cost?

The prospect

"What do you mean? Aren't those the same thing?"

No. The price is what you pay today to fix the problem — so we can eliminate it altogether. The cost is what you're paying in the future by doing nothing now.

So which one's actually more expensive to you?

These are the clients who chose correctly.

[01]
Healthcare

24 employees storing patient data on personal drives with no encryption, no MFA, and no backup plan

The cost of doing nothing
HIPAA breach penalty range$50K–$1.5M
Average healthcare data breach$10.93M
Downtime from ransomware (avg)22 days
Patient trust — unrecoverable

One phishing click away from a reportable breach. No incident response plan. No detection capability. No idea who had access to what.

The price of fixing it
CloudByte managed services$249/user/mo
Onboarding & migrationIncluded
Phishing simulation programIncluded
24/7 SOC + SIEM monitoringIncluded

MFA enforced across all identities. Encryption at rest and in transit. Automated backups with tested recovery. Phishing simulation program reduced click-through rates by 84% in six months.

The outcome

Zero security incidents since onboarding. HIPAA compliance posture went from undocumented to audit-ready. Phishing susceptibility dropped from 31% to under 5%. The environment they were terrified of became the environment they show to partners during due diligence.

[02]
Aerospace & Defense

CMMC assessment approaching with no SSP, no evidence, and a commercial M365 tenant handling CUI

The cost of doing nothing
Failed CMMC assessmentContract loss
Prime contractor flow-down risk$2M+ revenue
Re-assessment timeline6–12 months
Competitor advantage while waitingPermanent

CUI sitting in a commercial tenant with no boundary. No system security plan. No evidence of any NIST 800-171 controls. Assessment was 4 months away.

The price of fixing it
CloudByte managed services$229/user/mo
GCC High migrationIncluded
SSP + POA&M developmentIncluded
Atomus MSSP co-managementIncluded

Full GCC High migration completed in 6 weeks. System security plan developed with evidence mapping to all 110 NIST 800-171 controls. Environment hardened. Ongoing compliance monitoring established with Atomus.

The outcome

Assessment passed. Contract retained. CUI now lives in a FedRAMP High boundary with U.S.-person access controls. The client won two new subcontracts in the following year that required CMMC Level 2 — contracts they would have been ineligible for without the migration.

[03]
Financial Services

Single flat network with no segmentation, 8-year-old firewall, and remote access via open RDP

The cost of doing nothing
Average cost of financial data breach$5.9M
Open RDP — #1 ransomware entry pointCritical
Regulatory fine exposure (SOX/GLBA)$100K+
Client attrition after breach disclosure~30%

A compromised RDP session would give an attacker lateral access to every system on the network — including client financial records, wire transfer approvals, and internal accounting. No segmentation. No detection. No IR plan.

The price of fixing it
CloudByte managed services$229/user/mo
Firewall + network overhaulAmortized
Zero-trust architectureIncluded
Conditional access + MFAIncluded

RDP eliminated. Modern firewall deployed with network segmentation. VPN modernized. Conditional access enforced. Zero-trust model implemented — no implicit trust for any device or identity, regardless of network location.

The outcome

Attack surface reduced by an estimated 90%. Insurance premium decreased after the security posture reassessment. Passed their next regulatory review with zero findings for the first time. The network that kept their CISO up at night became the network their auditor cited as a model.

[04]
Government Agency

140 endpoints with inconsistent policies, no MDM, and 3 former employees still with active credentials

The cost of doing nothing
Active credentials for ex-employees3 accounts
Insider threat / data exfiltration riskSevere
Non-compliant endpoints~60%
Failed audit finding (NIST AC controls)Likely

Three former employees had active access to internal systems and SharePoint. No automated deprovisioning. No device compliance policies. Over half of managed devices would fail a basic security audit.

The price of fixing it
CloudByte managed services$189/user/mo
Endpoint hardening projectIncluded
Automated lifecycle managementIncluded
Conditional access + compliance policiesIncluded

All ex-employee credentials revoked within 48 hours of engagement start. Intune enrolled across all 140 endpoints. Compliance policies enforced. Automated onboarding and offboarding deployed — new hires provisioned in hours, departures deprovisioned immediately.

The outcome

100% endpoint compliance within 60 days. Zero orphaned credentials since deployment. Onboarding time dropped from days to hours. The government agency passed its next assessment with full marks on access control — the section they'd failed twice previously.

[05]

The price is always visible. The cost only reveals itself when it's too late.

Every client above had the same initial hesitation. Every one of them will tell you the same thing in hindsight: the price of fixing it was a fraction of what doing nothing would have cost.

[06]

What's the cost of your current situation?

Tell us what you're dealing with. We'll show you what fixing it looks like — and what doing nothing is already costing you.