CMMC Consultants and Compliance Services

Who provides CMMC compliance services

CMMC compliance services fall into two camps: people who help you prepare, and people who assess you. Keeping them separate is a rule, not a preference ².

Preparation and implementation

• Registered Practitioners (RPs) are trained and tested CMMC implementers who provide consulting preparation services, on their own or within an RPO ¹.
• Registered Practitioner Organizations (RPOs) are consulting firms or MSPs that provide non-certified advisory services through RPs and do not conduct certified assessments ¹. Older material calls them Registered Provider Organizations; it is the same acronym.
• General CMMC consultants and NIST 800-171 consultants may not be registered with the Cyber AB. Registration is not required to give advice, but it tells you the people have CMMC training.
• Managed service providers (MSPs) and managed security providers run the day-to-day controls: patching, identity, logging, backups and monitoring.

Assessment

• C3PAOs perform Level 2 certification assessments using Certified CMMC Assessors and Professionals ⁵. How that works, and why it is paused, is on our C3PAO assessment page.

Clear IT Pricing is none of these. We publish guides and pass CMMC requests to an advisory partner.

CMMC consulting vs assessing: the three-year rule

Your consultant cannot be your assessor. Under 32 CFR 170.8, the Cyber AB's code of professional conduct must prohibit CMMC ecosystem members from participating in a Level 2 certification assessment of a company they helped prepare for a CMMC assessment within the previous three years ².

What that means when you hire:

• If a firm offers both consulting and C3PAO assessment, it can do one or the other for you within that three-year window, not both.
• Ask every consultant whether it is part of, or affiliated with, a C3PAO, so you do not rule out an assessor you may want later.
• Ecosystem members must also avoid activities that create actual or perceived conflicts and disclose them in writing ².

Right now this matters less day to day, because contracts cannot require a C3PAO assessment during the Phase 2 suspension ⁶. It still matters for planning: if you expect a C3PAO assessment when Phase 2 resumes, choose your consultant knowing that firm cannot assess you. The schedule may change; check the DoD CIO CMMC page for current status ³.

CMMC readiness and gap assessments

A CMMC gap assessment (often sold as a readiness assessment) compares your current setup with each requirement and tells you what to fix, in what order. It is the most useful first purchase for most contractors, because it turns "we need CMMC" into a priced list.

A good gap assessment should:

• Start with scope. Where FCI and CUI live, which assets are in scope, and whether a separated enclave makes sense. DoD's Level 2 Scoping Guide sets the asset categories ⁷; our GCC High and enclave guide explains them.
• Use the official assessment objectives. Each requirement has objectives in NIST SP 800-171A; a finding without objectives is a guess ⁸.
• Score you the way DoD does. Start at 110 and subtract 5, 3 or 1 point for each requirement not met ⁹.
• Respect the POA&M limits. You need at least 88 to use one, only 1-point items can be on it, six requirements can never be deferred, and everything must close within 180 days ⁴.
• Leave you with documents, not only a slide deck: a system security plan, a plan of action and the evidence list.

If you hold only FCI, the same exercise against the 15 Level 1 requirements is much smaller. For Level 2, see the CMMC Level 2 requirements.

Managed service providers for CMMC

An MSP can run many of the technical controls, but you remain responsible for compliance. When an outside provider is part of your environment, the rule requires your system security plan to document the provider's role ¹⁰. That means a service description and a customer responsibility matrix (CRM) showing which requirements the provider meets and which stay with you ¹⁰.

What to ask a provider that says it supports CMMC:

• Will you give us a customer responsibility matrix covering all 110 requirements?
• Are your own tools in scope? Remote management and monitoring systems that provide security functions for your CUI environment can count as Security Protection Assets, which are assessed against the requirements relevant to them ⁷.
• Do you handle CUI in the cloud? DFARS 252.204-7012 requires cloud services that store, process or transmit covered defense information to meet security equivalent to the FedRAMP Moderate baseline ¹¹.
• Who reports incidents, and can you meet the 72-hour DoD reporting requirement and the 90-day image retention ¹¹?

Many contractors pair an RPO for documentation and assessment preparation with an MSP for daily operation, or use a co-managed IT setup alongside internal staff. For broader security operations, see managed security services, and for part-time security leadership, a vCISO.

How to choose CMMC help

Choose CMMC help for evidence of the work, not for promises about passing. Questions that separate useful providers from the rest:

1. Are you an RPO, and who are the Registered Practitioners on my project? Check the Cyber AB Marketplace yourself ¹.
2. Are you affiliated with a C3PAO? If so, ask how it keeps the roles apart: anyone who helped prepare you cannot take part in your Level 2 certification assessment for three years ².
3. What exactly do I get? Ask for a sample deliverable: a redacted gap report, system security plan or CRM.
4. Will you run the controls or just document them? Documentation without operation fails at assessment.
5. How do you price? Fixed fee for a gap assessment, hourly for advisory, monthly for managed services. There is no neutral published survey of CMMC consultant or RPO rates, so compare written quotes. As a reference point, one published 2026 guide puts external IT consultant labor at $150 to $250 per hour ¹².
6. What do you need from us? Good providers will ask for contracts, a network diagram and an asset list early.

About compliance software: tools that track requirements, store evidence and generate documents can save time, but they do not implement controls. Use one if it fits how you work, not as a substitute for doing the work.

If you would like an introduction, send a request through the form and we will pass it to our advisory partner. For budget context, see CMMC cost; for the rules behind all of this, see the CMMC overview and the NIST 800-171 guide.