Technology

Avatara Platform Achieves FedRAMP Moderate Equivalency Under DoD Mandates

Published

4 months ago

May 4, 2026

Pre-configured CMMC-aligned enterprise and enclave workspaces can be deployed in as little as 30 days—helping over 220,000 defense contractors meet CMMC requirements faster and remain eligible for federal contracts

Key Takeaways

Avatara Platform achieves FedRAMP Moderate Equivalency for handling sensitive defense dataPlatform enables defense contractors to inherit 80% of CMMC Level 2 objectives, reducing compliance burdensDefense contractors can deploy fully-managed CMMC-aligned enterprise and enclave workspaces in as little as 30 daysAvatara’s solution targets 220,000+ companies competing for a share of more than $300 billion annually in DoD procurement and R&D spendingAvatara workspaces meet both NIST SP 800-171 and CMMC Level 2 standards

ST. LOUIS, May 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Avatara, which provides businesses with compliant IT systems-as-a-service, announced today that Avatara Platform has achieved FedRAMP Moderate Equivalency under Department of Defense (DoD) mandates.

The Avatara Platform achieved FedRAMP Moderate Equivalency under DoD mandates, strengthening Avatara’s CMMC offering.

This certification validates the company’s platform for handling sensitive defense data and strengthens Avatara’s CMMC offering — fully-managed enterprise and enclave workspaces that can be deployed in as little as 30 days, helping defense contractors meet mandatory Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Level 2 requirements without redesigning their existing IT infrastructure. The platform supports all 110 CMMC Level 2 controls, with 80% of required objectives inherited directly from Avatara Platform, significantly reducing the compliance burden on contractors preparing for certification.

“This is a big win for Avatara, and for the hundreds of thousands of defense contractors that need secure environments that protect sensitive data while meeting strict security regulations,” said Rob McCormick, founder and CEO of Avatara. “Our FedRAMP equivalency validates our data-centric security foundation and helps customers achieve compliance faster and with greater confidence.”

FedRAMP (the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) is the U.S. government’s standard for evaluating the security of cloud services. Defense contractors that utilize third-parties to store, process or transmit sensitive defense data must use providers that meet FedRAMP Moderate authorized or equivalent standards under DFARS 252.204-7012.

The Stakes for Defense Contractors

More than 220,000 companies across the Defense Industrial Base are subject to CMMC requirements. These organizations compete for a share of more than $300 billion annually in DoD procurement and R&D spending. Under DFARS 252.204-7012, any contractor storing, processing, or transmitting controlled defense information in the cloud must use a provider that meets FedRAMP Moderate authorized or equivalent security standards. As CMMC enforcement accelerates through 2026 and beyond, companies operating in non-compliant environments risk disqualification from contract awards—making secure, compliant infrastructure not just a technical requirement, but a prerequisite for competing and winning new business.

“Achieving FedRAMP Moderate Equivalency is another strong testament to Avatara Platform’s core ability to deliver simple, secure, and compliant information systems,” added Brandon DiMemmo, VP of Product for Avatara. “At a time when the market is saturated with overly complex, piecemeal solutions and uncertain compliance outcomes, Avatara stands apart by delivering an all-inclusive, fully managed platform that makes compliance more attainable, predictable, and less burdensome for customers.”

FAQs: CMMC & Avatara Platform

How many companies are affected by CMMC Level 2 requirements?

Over 220,000 companies across the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) must meet CMMC requirements.

What’s at stake for defense contractors?

These organizations compete for a share of more than $300 billion annually in DoD procurement and R&D spending.

What’s the risk of non-compliance with CMMC Level 2?

Defense contractors face two related requirements: their cloud providers must meet FedRAMP Moderate authorized or equivalent standards under DFARS 252.204-7012, and the contractors themselves must achieve CMMC certification. Failure to meet either requirement can result in disqualification from DoD contract awards.

When is the deadline for CMMC enforcement?

CMMC enforcement accelerates through 2026 and beyond. Self-assessments are currently required. Additionally, third-party certification requirements will be phased into DoD contracts starting in November 2026, with many prime contractors already imposing flow down requirements for subcontractors.

How does Avatara Platform Help Defense Contractors Meet CMMC Requirements?

Avatara Platform helps defense contractors meet CMMC Level 2 requirements without redesigning their existing IT infrastructure. The platform supports all 110 CMMC Level 2 controls, with 80% of required objectives inherited directly from Avatara Platform, significantly reducing the compliance burden on contractors preparing for certification.

Pre-configured and fully-managed, Avatara Platform allows defense contractors to store, process and transmit sensitive defense data within isolated, secure enterprise and enclave workspaces that meet both NIST SP 800-171 and CMMC Level 2 standards.

Avatara Platform Explained:

Avatara Platform is a fully managed, compliant information system pre-designed to host and operate a customer’s complete IT environment. The platform delivers standardized, CMMC-aligned enterprise and enclave workspaces that are built, secured, and operated by Avatara on behalf of each customer.

Avatara provisions isolated, dedicated environments produced from the same system architecture, much like identical products coming off an assembly line. Offered as a simple per-user, per-month subscription, workspaces include everything required to support the customer’s handling of sensitive defense data. And, unlike traditional offerings, Avatara provides and manages the entire IT stack.

Deployed in as little as 30 days, customers simply access Avatara Platform from anywhere with a secure login.

About Avatara

Headquartered in St. Louis, Avatara is the developer of Avatara Platform, a fully-managed, all-inclusive, IT systems-as-a-service platform that allows businesses to significantly cut their annual IT spend, while meeting the rising tide of security and compliance standards impacting industries throughout the world. Avatara solves the problem of increasing cost, complexity, and compliance – The Three C’s of IT. We eliminate the endless cycle of acquiring, building, and maintaining an ever-evolving technology foundation to run your business.

Since its founding over 20 years ago, Avatara has worked with hundreds of businesses spanning a range of industries, including defense contractors, manufacturing, architecture, engineering, construction, healthcare, legal, finance, and retail sectors, among many others. Visit avataraplatform.com to learn more.

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SOURCE Avatara

Technology

Introhive Makes Relationship Intelligence Available to Enterprise AI Through MCP

Published

25 minutes ago

August 25, 2026

Now generally available to all Introhive customers, the standards-based connection brings continuously updated relationship context into compatible AI assistants.

FREDERICTON, NB, Aug. 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Introhive today announced the general availability of its MCP (Model Context Protocol) Server for all customers. The Introhive MCP Server gives firms a standardized way to connect their relationship intelligence to their AI infrastructure. Professionals can then query that intelligence directly, without switching systems or performing manual lookups, and without needing IT to build custom integrations.

Centralizing enterprise data is only part of the work. For firms building their own AI tools, the difficulty often emerges after the initial connection. Activity data must still be resolved to the correct people and companies, evaluated for relationship strength and recency, and kept current as interactions change. Without that work, an AI tool can be technically connected and still provide poor guidance. Introhive has built and continuously maintains that relationship-intelligence layer. The MCP Server makes it available to compatible AI assistants, agents, and internally developed applications.

Ask which contacts at an upcoming event are worth prioritizing. Find out which key account has gone quiet. Surface which colleague has the warmest path into a new client or expanded opportunity. Or help a firm’s own AI tool assess whether a proposed client introduction is actually warranted — instead of guessing from CRM fields nobody has updated in months.

Most firms are deploying AI without access to one of their most valuable assets: the context around firm-wide relationships. The signals exist across emails, calendars, contact histories and individual experience. Raw activity alone cannot tell an AI tool whether it has identified the correct person, how strong or current a relationship is, or who within the firm has the most credible path forward.

The Introhive MCP Server Advantage

For more than 14 years, Introhive has refined its approach to capturing, validating, and scoring those relationship signals. The platform goes beyond who knows whom; it evaluates factors including the recency, frequency, reciprocity, breadth, and depth of interactions across the firm, then organizes them into a continuously updated, firm-wide relationship graph.

Because MCP is an open standard, firms using the MCP Server can make the same relationship-intelligence layer available to multiple compatible tools rather than rebuilding a separate connection each time their AI environment changes. Unlike a custom API that locks relationship intelligence to a single tool, the MCP Server is model-agnostic by design: the graph doesn’t depend on which AI assistant wins next year, because it was never built into just one of them.

AI Can’t Drive Growth Without Relationship Context

As AI assistants become a more common interface for professional work, the quality of their answers increasingly depends on the intelligence underneath them. For professional services firms, relationships are central to winning new business, expanding client work and protecting important accounts.

The shift toward AI does not reduce the value of those relationships. It raises the cost of not having accurate relationship context available when growth decisions are made.

“I’ve watched enterprise technology evolve since the 1990s, but the shift now underway is more fundamental,” said Lee Blakemore, CEO of Introhive. “The way professionals interact with data and systems has been revolutionized, and the interface is wherever the professional happens to work, which means the intelligence layers underneath it create the value. Relationship intelligence is one of those foundational layers. A meaningful AI strategy must tap into the strength, reach, and trajectory of client relationships. Introhive’s MCP Server provides a secure, compliant, and portable way to make that intelligence available to compatible AI tools at the moment it’s needed. For organizations adopting AI responsibly, this is the infrastructure that helps them do so securely.”

Availability

The Introhive MCP Server is now generally available to all Introhive customers, expanding beyond the legal-sector commercial preview introduced in April 2026.

For more information, visit https://www.introhive.com/introhive-mcp/.

About Introhive

Introhive is the Relationship Intelligence Platform purpose-built for legal, accounting, consulting and built-environment firms. Introhive automatically captures, enriches and activates relationship data, turning emails, meetings and interactions into measurable relationship capital: the collective value of every client, prospective client, alumni and referral relationship across the firm.

Because that data is captured continuously and kept current without manual effort, Introhive gives professionals and AI tools the reliable, timely context they need to identify the right connections and support firm growth. Introhive is trusted by 20 of the world’s top 100 law firms and 36 of the top 100 accounting firms, with users in more than 90 countries.

For more information, visit https://www.introhive.com/.

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SOURCE Introhive

Technology

Fins Adds Benzinga’s Premium US Equities Newsfeed to Power FinScores

Published

25 minutes ago

August 25, 2026

Premium US Equities Newsfeed gives Fins’ AI engine faster, higher-quality signal

DETROIT, Aug. 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Benzinga, a leading provider of real-time financial news and market intelligence, today announced that Fins has added Benzinga’s Premium US Equities Newsfeed to its platform.

Fins is built around surfacing the market-moving signal inside the news noise. A fast, high-quality equities newsfeed is the raw fuel for that engine, giving Fins sharper and faster FinScores. Each FinScore assigns a numeric, ticker-specific score to a news event’s likely market impact, paired with AI-generated reasoning and tracked against real price movement after the news breaks.

The addition reflects Benzinga’s broader mission to democratize financial information, putting institutional-grade market intelligence directly into the hands of everyday investors. Fins represents a new generation of AI-native apps built on that same idea.

“Retail investors don’t only want more news. They want to know which headlines actually matter,” said Michael Saad, AI Licensing Lead at Benzinga. “Fins is built around that idea, and we’re glad to be the newsfeed powering it.”

“The best investment decisions begin with trusted information,” said Mehmet Kağan Aydoğan, Founder & CEO of Fins. “At Fins, our mission is to become the trusted destination for reliable financial news. Our partnership with Benzinga enables us to deliver high-quality financial news, while Fins provides the context that helps investors understand why each story matters.”

Benzinga’s Premium US Equities Newsfeed delivers fast, high-quality coverage across U.S. equities, giving platforms like Fins the raw material to build sharper analysis and scoring tools on top of real-time market data.

About Benzinga

Benzinga is a leading financial media and data technology company that empowers investors with high-quality, real-time market intelligence. Through its news platform, APIs, and data products, Benzinga provides traders, financial institutions, and fintech platforms with the insights they need to make smarter investment decisions. From breaking news and analyst ratings to corporate events and alternative datasets, Benzinga’s tools help market participants stay ahead of the information that drives price movement.

To learn more, visit benzinga.com/apis.

About Fins

Fins is an AI-driven financial intelligence platform that helps investors understand not just what is happening in the markets, but why it matters. By combining trusted financial news with AI-powered event classification and the mathematical FinScore Engine, Fins transforms complex market information into clear, actionable insights. Instead of simply aggregating headlines, Fins identifies the companies affected, classifies each event into standardized market categories and evaluates its potential market relevance through a transparent mathematical scoring model. With personalized news feeds, real-time alerts and contextual analysis, Fins enables investors to make faster, more informed decisions with confidence.

To learn more, visit fins.news.

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SOURCE Benzinga

Technology

Amity Global Research Hub Launches in New York to Boost India-US Innovation

Published

25 minutes ago

August 25, 2026

The Amity Global Research Hub (AGRH) is a multidisciplinary international platform established by Amity University to foster world-class research collaboration, innovation, entrepreneurship, technology commercialization, and policy engagement across global ecosystems. AGRH enables collaborative research that addresses pressing global challenges while creating opportunities for scientific discovery, economic development, and societal transformation.

NEW YORK, Aug. 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — In a significant step towards strengthening India–United States collaboration in science, technology and innovation, the Amity Global Research Hub (AGRH) was inaugurated at the Consulate General of India, New York, on August 21, 2026, under the theme “Shaping the Future through Emerging Technologies.”

Amity Global Research Hub Launched in New York to Strengthen India–US Research and Innovation Partnerships

The launch marks the beginning of an international research platform envisioned to bring together academic institutions, researchers, industry, innovators and other stakeholders from India, the United States and the wider global ecosystem. The initiative aims to facilitate collaborative research, promote knowledge exchange and create new pathways for innovation and technology-led solutions to global challenges.

The inauguration also witnessed the unveiling of the AGRH website and research brochure, followed by panel discussions focusing on multi-sector partnerships, research, innovation, emerging technologies, and opportunities for strengthening India–US collaboration. The discussions brought together distinguished representatives and academic and research stakeholders from institutions including Rutgers University, Georgia Institute of Technology, CUNY, Long Island University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the National Cancer Institute.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Aseem Chauhan, Chancellor, Amity University and Chairman, AGRH, highlighted the importance of creating globally connected research ecosystems that can address increasingly complex technological and societal challenges. AGRH is envisioned as more than an international academic presence. It seeks to function as a bridge connecting the research strengths, talent and innovation capabilities of India with the extensive academic, scientific, technological and entrepreneurial ecosystem of the United States.

The initiative comes at a time when emerging technologies are rapidly transforming economies and societies, creating both new opportunities and complex challenges. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, advanced materials, biotechnology, healthcare technologies, cybersecurity, space technologies and clean and sustainable technologies increasingly require interdisciplinary and international collaboration.

Dr. Sandeep Mittan Director Amity Global Research Hub & Vice President Research and Development highlighted how AGRH will serve as a platform to foster international research partnerships and advance innovation through collaboration between India and the United States. This initiative will be the creation of opportunities for young researchers, students and innovators to participate in international research networks.

AGRH aims to contribute to this process by facilitating interactions among researchers and institutions and supporting opportunities for knowledge exchange and collaborative engagement. The Hub’s broader vision is to create meaningful opportunities not only for established researchers but also for emerging scientists, innovators and entrepreneurs.

The establishment of AGRH in New York provides access to one of the world’s most diverse and dynamic ecosystems of universities, research institutions, technology companies, healthcare organizations, investors, start-ups and global talent. This environment provides significant opportunities for building connections between Indian researchers and their counterparts in the United States. The launch event itself reflected this potential, bringing together representatives from leading American academic and research institutions for discussions around collaborative research and innovation.

Prof. (Dr.) W. Selvamurthy, President, Amity Science, Technology & Innovation Foundation, emphasized the importance of collaboration in shaping the next generation of research and innovation. The multidisciplinary approach of AGRH is particularly significant as many of today’s major challenges cut across traditional academic boundaries. Addressing issues related to health, climate change, energy, advanced manufacturing, digital technologies and national and global security requires researchers from multiple disciplines to work together. The Hub therefore aims to facilitate an ecosystem in which ideas can move from research and discovery to innovation, technology development and societal impact.

Strengthening the India-US Knowledge Partnership : The launch of AGRH also comes against the backdrop of the expanding strategic relationship between India and the United States in science, technology, education and innovation. The initiative’s emphasis on multi-sector partnerships is particularly significant. Rather than limiting collaboration to academic institutions, AGRH aims to create connections involving research organizations, industry, innovators, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders.

The inauguration of AGRH represents an important milestone in Amity’s continued efforts to expand its international research partnerships and strengthen collaboration between India and the United States. The long-term ambition is to develop AGRH into a platform where global research partnerships can generate tangible outcomes-ranging from collaborative research and knowledge exchange to technology development, innovation, entrepreneurship and opportunities for the next generation of researchers.

With its launch in New York, the Amity Global Research Hub seeks to position itself at this intersection-connecting India’s growing research and innovation capabilities with global opportunities, and contributing to a future shaped by collaboration, technology and knowledge.

Learn more about Amity Global Research Hub at https://amity.edu/agrh/

Dr. Sandeep Mittan, PhD , FAHA

Director Amity Global Research Hub

Vice President Research and Development

Amity Education Group Long Island Campus, New York

500 Montauk Hwy, Oakdale, NY 11769

Executive Board Member New Jersey Academy of Science (NJAS), New Jersey

Research Scholar – National Institute of Health-NIH,MD 20892

Email : smittan@amity.edu

M: +16467023447

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SOURCE Amity University