Rewrite: choosing-compliance-software-the-decision-framework

Word count: ~1,720

Specificity markers hit:

1. ✅ NIST/CMMC control reference (CA.L2-3.12.1, CA.L2-3.12.3, AU.L2-3.3.1)
2. ✅ Cost/time estimate ($12K–$50K/year platform, 4–12 week onboarding, $3K–$8K/month MSP alternative)
3. ✅ Tool/product name (Drata, Vanta, Secureframe, Hyperproof, RegScale, AuditBoard)
4. ✅ Common mistake (buying a platform before scope is defined)
5. ✅ Decision point with guidance (build vs. buy vs. MSP-managed)

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# Choosing Compliance Software: The Decision Framework

Defense contractors shopping for compliance software typically do it backwards. They get pitched by a vendor, buy the platform, then try to make their CMMC program fit around it. This produces expensive underutilization — a $30,000 annual subscription that monitors 40 of your 110 controls because your environment wasn't scoped before you bought.

The right sequence is: understand your requirements, map your environment, define your evidence strategy, then select tooling. That sequence is what this framework covers.

Step 1: Know What You're Actually Buying

Compliance software is not CMMC compliance. It's an evidence collection, monitoring, and workflow management platform. The distinction matters because it sets accurate expectations for what the software will and won't do.

What it does: continuously pulls configuration data from connected systems (Azure AD, Microsoft 365, endpoint management tools, cloud infrastructure), monitors for control drift, organizes evidence by framework, and supports your SSP and POA&M workflows.

What it doesn't do: configure your technical controls, train your employees, write your policies, or run your C3PAO assessment.

Decision point: If you're pre-implementation — meaning your MFA isn't deployed, your SIEM isn't configured, your SSP doesn't exist — you don't need compliance software yet. You need an implementation plan and a consultant. Buying a monitoring platform before you have controls to monitor is backwards.

If your technical controls are largely in place and you're building your evidence library and preparing for assessment, compliance software becomes genuinely useful.

Step 2: Define Your Environment Before Evaluating Vendors

The most important compatibility question isn't "does this platform support CMMC?" — every vendor says yes. The real question is "does this platform support my infrastructure?"

Map your environment first:

Cloud vs. on-premises: Cloud-native environments (Azure GCC High, AWS GovCloud, Microsoft 365 GCC High) integrate cleanly with most compliance platforms via API. On-premises infrastructure — Windows Server, on-prem Active Directory, physical network equipment — requires agents or manual evidence collection for anything the API can't reach. If your CUI environment is primarily on-premises, verify exactly which systems the platform can connect to before buying.

Identity provider: The platform needs read access to your identity system to monitor user accounts, MFA status, access policies, and privileged account configurations. Azure AD and Okta integrations are mature. Legacy on-prem Active Directory often requires an agent or connector with limited visibility.

SIEM/logging: If you already have Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, or another SIEM collecting audit logs (AU.L2-3.3.1), the compliance platform should pull from it rather than establishing a parallel log collection pipeline. Duplicate log collection creates scope and cost problems.

Endpoint management: SCCM, Intune, Jamf — the platform needs to see your patch status, configuration baselines, and installed software. Cloud-managed endpoints (Intune) integrate easily. Hybrid environments need more verification.

Before scheduling any demos, also confirm connector availability for these specific integration points: Azure AD / Entra ID for identity and access visibility, Microsoft Intune or SCCM for endpoint configuration and patch status, your SIEM (Sentinel, Splunk, or Elastic) for log ingestion, Tenable or Qualys for vulnerability scan data import, and your ticketing system (Jira or ServiceNow) for alert-to-work-item workflows. Each of these is a discrete integration — not a blanket "cloud support" claim. A platform missing two or three of your critical connectors may still advertise full CMMC coverage but will require significant manual evidence collection to fill those gaps. Ask vendors to confirm each connector in writing, not just verbally in a demo.

Write a two-page environment summary before your first vendor call. Share it with every vendor and ask them to map your specific systems to their integration library. If they can't show you the integration documentation for your stack, the fit may be poor.

Step 3: Match Platform to CMMC Coverage Depth

Not all platforms provide the same depth of CMMC coverage. Some cover compliance management broadly (frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, CMMC) with decent coverage across all. Others are CMMC-specific and go deeper on DoD-specific requirements. Here's the practical landscape:

General-purpose GRC platforms — Drata, Vanta, Secureframe, and Hyperproof all offer CMMC modules alongside other frameworks. Good choice if you need SOC 2 or FedRAMP alongside CMMC, or if you're a mid-size company that wants one platform for multiple compliance needs. Pricing: $12,000–$40,000 per year depending on company size.

CMMC/DoD-focused platforms — Qmulos (built on Splunk, strong in the federal space) and RegScale (automation-focused, designed for fast-paced compliance programs) go deeper on CMMC-specific evidence requirements and DoD expectations. Better for organizations whose primary compliance driver is CMMC and who want deeper control-level automation. Pricing: $20,000–$50,000 per year.

GRC enterprise platforms — AuditBoard and LogicGate are broader governance, risk, and compliance platforms with more configuration flexibility. More powerful for complex organizations, but also more complex to implement and typically require more internal resources. Pricing: custom, generally $30,000+.

The key question: Ask each vendor for their CMMC Level 2 assessment objective coverage map — a document showing which of the ~320 NIST SP 800-171A assessment objectives they provide automated evidence for, and which require manual collection. A vendor who can't produce this document is making coverage claims they can't substantiate.

Step 4: The Build/Buy/Managed Tripoint

Before signing a contract, answer three questions:

Build (DIY with a platform): You buy the platform, your IT team handles integration and onboarding, your compliance team manages the workflows. Makes sense if you have in-house IT capacity, a dedicated compliance function (even part-time), and enough systems that automation pays off. Works well for 50+ employees with a defined CUI scope.

Buy + services: You buy the platform and also engage the vendor's professional services or a CMMC consultant to handle onboarding, SSP drafting, and evidence organization. Adds $15,000–$40,000 in one-time services cost but shortens time to value significantly. Most organizations underestimate onboarding complexity — 4–12 weeks from contract to operational platform is realistic, often longer for complex environments.

MSP-managed: Some Managed Security Service Providers include compliance platform management as part of their CMMC offering — they run the platform, maintain integrations, collect evidence, and help prepare your assessment package. Cost is bundled into an MSP engagement, typically $3,000–$8,000 per month for a small organization. Higher total cost than buying direct, but lower internal burden. Right for organizations with limited in-house IT capacity.

Common Mistakes When Buying Compliance Software

Buying for the demo, not the integration. Every platform has a polished demo. The demo shows what the platform looks like when it's connected to a perfect cloud-native environment. Your environment is not perfect. Before you buy, get the vendor to show you a live integration with your specific systems — or at minimum, show you a documented integration guide and let you verify against your tech stack.

Underestimating onboarding time. "We'll be up and running in two weeks" is almost never true for a CMMC environment. Plan for 6–12 weeks from contract signing to a functional, evidence-collecting platform. If you have an assessment scheduled, buy the platform at least six months before the assessment date.

Ignoring the export question. Your assessor needs to review evidence — not your vendor's dashboard. Ask every vendor how evidence is exported for C3PAO review. Can you export a complete evidence package organized by control domain? Can you generate a hash manifest? Can the assessor access the evidence without a platform account? If the answers are unclear, you may spend weeks before your assessment reformatting data.

Choosing based on price alone. The $5,000/year platform that covers 30 controls is not a bargain compared to the $20,000 platform that covers 90. Calculate the cost per control-domain covered, factor in your internal hours to manually collect the evidence the cheaper platform misses, and include the cost of the consultant you'll likely need to fill those gaps at assessment time.

What Your Assessor Expects

Your C3PAO assessor is evaluating whether your controls are implemented and whether you can prove it. The compliance platform is the mechanism that supports your proof. Assessors see a wide range of evidence packages — from folder trees of screenshots to organized, tool-generated evidence packages with hash manifests.

A well-configured compliance platform produces evidence that is: - Organized by CMMC domain and control ID - Time-stamped and attributable to specific systems - Exportable without requiring vendor access - Current — reflecting state at or near the assessment date, not six months prior

For CA.L2-3.12.1 (periodic assessment of security controls) and CA.L2-3.12.3 (ongoing monitoring), your assessor will want to see that your compliance monitoring is a continuous activity, not a pre-assessment scramble. A compliance platform that's been running for six months before your assessment shows ongoing monitoring. One that was onboarded two weeks before the assessment does not.

The platform is a tool. Whether it helps you pass your assessment depends entirely on whether it's configured correctly, connected to your actual infrastructure, and maintained consistently. Buy the right tool at the right time, and it earns its cost. Buy it too early, with the wrong integrations, or as a substitute for doing the implementation work, and you'll spend assessment week manually collecting evidence anyway.

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Evaluating compliance software options? Map your infrastructure first, then get coverage matrices from each vendor for your specific tech stack before scheduling any demos.