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Specialization

CMMC and NIST 800-171 readiness.

For defense contractors and regulated businesses whose contracts bring security requirements with them. We do the gap analysis, close the technical gaps, and get the documentation and evidence into a state that holds up - working alongside your assessor, not in place of them.

Book an AI Workflow Assessment What readiness covers

Scope of practice BetterOps provides readiness, remediation and evidence-preparation services. We are not a C3PAO or an accredited assessment organization, we do not perform certification assessments, and we cannot issue certifications.

Most of this is engineering, not paperwork

The documentation matters and the evidence has to exist, but the reason readiness projects stall is rarely the writing. It is that the underlying controls are not actually in place: access is broader than anyone realized, logging is not retained, the tenant was configured years ago by somebody who has left, and the scope boundary has never been drawn.

That is engineering work, and it is the same work we do for businesses with no compliance obligation at all - which is why we treat it as one practice rather than two. The controls that satisfy a requirement are the controls that make the business defensible.

It is also what makes it safe to automate. Identity, access, logging and data boundaries are the prerequisites for both, so businesses in this position frequently find the readiness project and the AI project are largely the same project.

What readiness work covers

Scoped to what your contracts actually require. The first job is establishing which requirements genuinely apply, because that decision drives everything downstream.

01

Gap analysis

An assessment of your current environment against the requirements that apply to you, with each gap written up in terms of what is missing, what it would take to close, and what depends on it.

02

System Security Plan support

Helping you produce and maintain an SSP that describes the environment you actually run - including scope boundaries, which is where most of the difficulty genuinely sits.

03

POA&M development

A plan of action with milestones that is realistic about sequence and effort, rather than a list of everything restated as a deadline.

04

Technical remediation

The actual work: identity and access, MFA and conditional access, endpoint and email protection, logging, encryption, backup, and Microsoft 365 configuration.

05

Policy and procedure

Written policies that match how the business operates, because a policy describing a process nobody follows is a finding rather than a control.

06

Evidence preparation

Getting the artefacts, records and screenshots into a state where they can be produced on request instead of reconstructed under pressure.

We work to the same approach for NIST 800-171 where that applies instead. If your obligations come from financial regulation rather than a defense contract, see SEC, Reg S-P and FTC Safeguards readiness.

How a readiness engagement runs

  1. Scoping conversation

    What your contracts actually require, what data you handle, and which parts of your environment are genuinely in scope. Scope is where most of the cost is decided.

  2. Gap analysis

    A structured review of the environment against the applicable requirements, producing a written gap register with effort and dependency for each item.

  3. Remediation

    We close the technical gaps and help you produce the documentation, working in the order that dependencies dictate rather than requirement number order.

  4. Readiness and upkeep

    Evidence organized, documentation current, and a cadence to keep it that way - because the environment keeps changing after the work is done.

Start with a scoping conversation.

Thirty minutes on what your contracts require and what is actually in scope - the question that decides most of the cost.

Book an AI Workflow Assessment

Questions about readiness

Can BetterOps certify us?
No. BetterOps is not a C3PAO and is not an accredited assessment organization. We do not perform certification assessments and cannot issue any certification. What we do is prepare you for one: gap analysis, remediation, documentation and evidence, so that the assessment you eventually go through is not the moment you find out where you stand.
Are you a compliance consultancy or a law firm?
Neither. We are a technology and operations firm. We do the engineering and documentation work that readiness requires, and we work alongside your compliance counsel or consultant where a question is genuinely legal or regulatory. We do not provide legal advice and we do not guarantee any regulatory outcome.
What is the difference between CMMC and NIST 800-171?
NIST SP 800-171 is the underlying set of security requirements for protecting controlled unclassified information in non-federal systems. CMMC is the Department of Defense programme that verifies contractors have implemented those requirements, with the level and form of verification depending on what data a contract involves. In practice the engineering work is largely the same; what changes is the evidence burden and who checks it.
We only handle FCI, not CUI. Does this apply?
The requirements differ significantly depending on which you handle, and getting that scoping question right is the single biggest lever on cost and effort. It is the first thing we work through with you, because a great deal of wasted spending comes from businesses assuming they are in a harder category than they actually are - or an easier one.
How does this relate to the AI work you do?
Directly. The controls that readiness requires - identity, access, logging, data boundaries, documented ownership - are the same controls that make it safe to give automation access to your systems. Businesses in this position often find the two efforts are largely the same project, which is a considerable saving over running them separately.
What about the FTC Safeguards Rule?
Same approach, different requirement set. If your business falls under it, we do the gap analysis, close the technical gaps and help you produce the documentation and evidence it calls for. Financial firms - advisers, wealth management and similar - have their own page covering the Safeguards Rule and Regulation S-P.

Talk to us about readiness.

We will be straightforward about what applies to you, what it will take, and where you need an assessor rather than us.

Book an AI Workflow Assessment