Organizations that want to start or continue working with the Department of Defense (DoD) in the foreseeable future must obtain a Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC).
The specific amount you need to invest to achieve CMMC compliance depends on numerous factors, making it challenging for different teams to estimate the total cost.
This guide will discuss the official CMMC certification cost estimates as well as important cost drivers to consider. Use this guide as a reference to assess and calculate your organization’s anticipated CMMC compliance costs more accurately.
How much does CMMC certification cost?
The total cost of CMMC certification can range between $4,000 and $150,000+ according to DoD’s official estimates. This broad range encompasses two considerations impacting the cost estimates.
- Organization size
- Selected CMMC certification level
The following table outlines the estimated costs according to these factors:
Please note that these costs are estimates based on the information available from the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), and actual costs may be higher or lower depending on your scope.
Given that CMMC Level 2 and Level 3 certificates are valid for three years, the above figures reflect your overarching three-year costs. The same adjustment also applies to the one-year Level 1 & 2 self-assessments, the costs of which are corrected to account for the three-year period, for easier comparison.
The overall costs encompass several aspects of CMMC certification, including:
- Planning and preparation
- Assessment process
- Reporting
- Annual compliance affirmations
The DoD does not factor in costs related to the implementation of CMMC’s practices, which is why the higher end of our estimate is over $150,000. The exact costs can vary greatly depending on how you implement the in-scope practices.
{{cta_withimage27="/cta-blocks"}} | CMMC compliance checklist
3 factors impacting total CMMC costs
Your current relationship with the DoD heavily impacts your CMMC certification costs. If you’re an existing contractor or subcontractor, you should have already implemented the NIST 800-171 controls that CMMC is based on, which drastically reduces the certification costs.
If this isn’t the case, and you plan on pursuing defense contracts in the future, your costs will likely be higher because of the rigor of CMMC assessments.
Regardless of your contractor status with the DoD, you should expect the costs of CMMC certification to be driven by how you implement applicable practices, shaped by components like people, technology, and physical location.
Specifically, the following three factors influence the overall expenses:
- Existing security and compliance posture
- Compliance processes and workflows
- Long-term maintenance costs
Below, we’ll explain how these factors impact CMMC costs.
1. Existing security and compliance posture
The current state of your organization’s security and compliance program directly affects the total CMMC cost. Organizations with low-maturity security programs and those that haven’t implemented industry-standard frameworks will have more requirements to meet, so they’ll need to invest more.
The same applies to organizations that haven’t achieved compliance with the standards CMMC is built around, most notably NIST SP 800-171 Revision 2 and NIST SP 800-172. Other standards and regulations that overlap with the CMMC in inherent requirements include:
If you’ve implemented any of these standards, you can map their controls to the corresponding CMMC requirements and eliminate some duplicative cost components.
2. Compliance processes and workflows
The effectiveness of your compliance processes and workflows significantly impacts both the duration and cost of achieving CMMC compliance. If you don’t structure your workflows effectively, they might lead to inefficiencies and redundancies that increase cost and effort.
Some of the main cost drivers related to CMMC certification include:
- Security gap assessments and related remediation
- Documentation and policy development, especially the System Security Plan (SSP)
- Collection of evidence for each control objective
If these processes are inefficient or heavily dependent on manual tasks, they might overwhelm the affected teams and reduce their productivity, which results in slower and more costly compliance. Potential disruptions of daily activities aggravate this issue, causing additional inefficiencies and expenses.
{{cta_withimage22="/cta-blocks"}} | The audit ready checklist
3. Long-term maintenance costs
CMMC is either valid for one year (Level 1) or three years (Levels 2 and 3). Regardless of your chosen level, you must also submit annual compliance affirmations, which call for continuous review of your compliance per objective.
These activities contribute to the overall CMMC costs, but your annual budget can vary significantly depending on your monitoring systems and their efficiency.
For example, manual point-in-time assessments might let specific practices, such as monitoring change management processes or least privilege access configurations, become less effective than they were upon initial certification. Failure to notice and address such issues promptly can increase the time and resources needed to remediate them later.
Effective compliance programs include continuous monitoring, automated alerting, and scheduled internal audits, which reduce the effort and cost associated with both annual affirmations and full recertifications. Investing in these systems up front can help prevent expensive fire-drills or compliance drift.
After obtaining the initial certificate, plan triennial Level 2 and Level 3 recertifications proactively. Remember to factor in all the relevant consultancy and internal workforce fees needed to maintain compliance across all levels.
Is CMMC compliance worth it?
CMMC is worth the investment because it unlocks various opportunities to pursue DoD contracts. It also enhances your organization’s cybersecurity posture, helping prevent costly security incidents.
When deciding whether to opt for CMMC certification, plan around your revenue goals and future engagements with the DoD (unless you already hold a contract). This will help you decide if and when to start adopting the CMMC.
How to lower CMMC compliance costs
Since the CMMC aims to protect Federal Contract Information (FCI) and Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), reviewing the potential data lineage and proactively protecting it is an optimal way of reducing future implementation costs.
“
To streamline CMMC compliance and reduce costs, organizations should consider isolating sensitive data assets within a secure enclave, minimizing complexity while maintaining robust security controls.”
Other ways to cut the related costs include:
- Understanding your current security posture: Conducting a thorough self-assessment of your existing security posture helps identify which control objectives are already in place, which need improvement, and which are missing entirely. This clarity allows you to focus resources on high-impact remediation efforts, avoid redundant work, and reduce the likelihood of expensive surprises during a formal assessment, making the certification process more streamlined.
- Scoping assessments accurately: Limiting the assessment scope to systems, people, and locations that store, process, or transmit FCI/CUI can help reduce the number of data flows subject to CMMC requirements and thus the associated implementation and audit costs.
- Automating as much as possible: Using a dedicated compliance automation solution removes numerous manual processes and inefficiencies, helping you achieve CMMC compliance faster and with minimal cost.
- Leveraging overlapping compliance frameworks: Find areas of overlap in other compliance frameworks you already adhere to, so you can avoid duplicative work.
Streamline CMMC compliance with Vanta
Vanta is a comprehensive trust management solution with a CMMC compliance solution that offers out-of-the-box support for all certification levels, automates several compliance workflows, and reduces the inherent costs through features such as:
- Automated gap assessments
- Automated evidence collection supported by 375+ integrations
- Pre-mapped security controls aligned to NIST SP 800-171 and NIST SP 800-172
- Centralized tracking and real-time monitoring of CMMC requirements
- Prescriptive guidance across controls, policies, and documents
If you’ve implemented standards and regulations that overlap with CMMC, Vanta can automatically map the corresponding controls to help you avoid duplicative workflows and related costs.
Schedule a custom demo of Vanta’s CMMC solution today.
{{cta_simple33="/cta-blocks"}} | CMMC product page
A note from Vanta: Vanta is not a law firm, and this article does not constitute or contain legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship. When determining your obligations and compliance with respect to relevant laws and regulations, you should consult a licensed attorney.
CMMC certification cost: A detailed breakdown
Looking to automate up to 50% of the work for CMMC?
Organizations that want to start or continue working with the Department of Defense (DoD) in the foreseeable future must obtain a Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC).
The specific amount you need to invest to achieve CMMC compliance depends on numerous factors, making it challenging for different teams to estimate the total cost.
This guide will discuss the official CMMC certification cost estimates as well as important cost drivers to consider. Use this guide as a reference to assess and calculate your organization’s anticipated CMMC compliance costs more accurately.
How much does CMMC certification cost?
The total cost of CMMC certification can range between $4,000 and $150,000+ according to DoD’s official estimates. This broad range encompasses two considerations impacting the cost estimates.
- Organization size
- Selected CMMC certification level
The following table outlines the estimated costs according to these factors:
Please note that these costs are estimates based on the information available from the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), and actual costs may be higher or lower depending on your scope.
Given that CMMC Level 2 and Level 3 certificates are valid for three years, the above figures reflect your overarching three-year costs. The same adjustment also applies to the one-year Level 1 & 2 self-assessments, the costs of which are corrected to account for the three-year period, for easier comparison.
The overall costs encompass several aspects of CMMC certification, including:
- Planning and preparation
- Assessment process
- Reporting
- Annual compliance affirmations
The DoD does not factor in costs related to the implementation of CMMC’s practices, which is why the higher end of our estimate is over $150,000. The exact costs can vary greatly depending on how you implement the in-scope practices.
{{cta_withimage27="/cta-blocks"}} | CMMC compliance checklist
3 factors impacting total CMMC costs
Your current relationship with the DoD heavily impacts your CMMC certification costs. If you’re an existing contractor or subcontractor, you should have already implemented the NIST 800-171 controls that CMMC is based on, which drastically reduces the certification costs.
If this isn’t the case, and you plan on pursuing defense contracts in the future, your costs will likely be higher because of the rigor of CMMC assessments.
Regardless of your contractor status with the DoD, you should expect the costs of CMMC certification to be driven by how you implement applicable practices, shaped by components like people, technology, and physical location.
Specifically, the following three factors influence the overall expenses:
- Existing security and compliance posture
- Compliance processes and workflows
- Long-term maintenance costs
Below, we’ll explain how these factors impact CMMC costs.
1. Existing security and compliance posture
The current state of your organization’s security and compliance program directly affects the total CMMC cost. Organizations with low-maturity security programs and those that haven’t implemented industry-standard frameworks will have more requirements to meet, so they’ll need to invest more.
The same applies to organizations that haven’t achieved compliance with the standards CMMC is built around, most notably NIST SP 800-171 Revision 2 and NIST SP 800-172. Other standards and regulations that overlap with the CMMC in inherent requirements include:
If you’ve implemented any of these standards, you can map their controls to the corresponding CMMC requirements and eliminate some duplicative cost components.
2. Compliance processes and workflows
The effectiveness of your compliance processes and workflows significantly impacts both the duration and cost of achieving CMMC compliance. If you don’t structure your workflows effectively, they might lead to inefficiencies and redundancies that increase cost and effort.
Some of the main cost drivers related to CMMC certification include:
- Security gap assessments and related remediation
- Documentation and policy development, especially the System Security Plan (SSP)
- Collection of evidence for each control objective
If these processes are inefficient or heavily dependent on manual tasks, they might overwhelm the affected teams and reduce their productivity, which results in slower and more costly compliance. Potential disruptions of daily activities aggravate this issue, causing additional inefficiencies and expenses.
{{cta_withimage22="/cta-blocks"}} | The audit ready checklist
3. Long-term maintenance costs
CMMC is either valid for one year (Level 1) or three years (Levels 2 and 3). Regardless of your chosen level, you must also submit annual compliance affirmations, which call for continuous review of your compliance per objective.
These activities contribute to the overall CMMC costs, but your annual budget can vary significantly depending on your monitoring systems and their efficiency.
For example, manual point-in-time assessments might let specific practices, such as monitoring change management processes or least privilege access configurations, become less effective than they were upon initial certification. Failure to notice and address such issues promptly can increase the time and resources needed to remediate them later.
Effective compliance programs include continuous monitoring, automated alerting, and scheduled internal audits, which reduce the effort and cost associated with both annual affirmations and full recertifications. Investing in these systems up front can help prevent expensive fire-drills or compliance drift.
After obtaining the initial certificate, plan triennial Level 2 and Level 3 recertifications proactively. Remember to factor in all the relevant consultancy and internal workforce fees needed to maintain compliance across all levels.
Is CMMC compliance worth it?
CMMC is worth the investment because it unlocks various opportunities to pursue DoD contracts. It also enhances your organization’s cybersecurity posture, helping prevent costly security incidents.
When deciding whether to opt for CMMC certification, plan around your revenue goals and future engagements with the DoD (unless you already hold a contract). This will help you decide if and when to start adopting the CMMC.
How to lower CMMC compliance costs
Since the CMMC aims to protect Federal Contract Information (FCI) and Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), reviewing the potential data lineage and proactively protecting it is an optimal way of reducing future implementation costs.
“
To streamline CMMC compliance and reduce costs, organizations should consider isolating sensitive data assets within a secure enclave, minimizing complexity while maintaining robust security controls.”
Other ways to cut the related costs include:
- Understanding your current security posture: Conducting a thorough self-assessment of your existing security posture helps identify which control objectives are already in place, which need improvement, and which are missing entirely. This clarity allows you to focus resources on high-impact remediation efforts, avoid redundant work, and reduce the likelihood of expensive surprises during a formal assessment, making the certification process more streamlined.
- Scoping assessments accurately: Limiting the assessment scope to systems, people, and locations that store, process, or transmit FCI/CUI can help reduce the number of data flows subject to CMMC requirements and thus the associated implementation and audit costs.
- Automating as much as possible: Using a dedicated compliance automation solution removes numerous manual processes and inefficiencies, helping you achieve CMMC compliance faster and with minimal cost.
- Leveraging overlapping compliance frameworks: Find areas of overlap in other compliance frameworks you already adhere to, so you can avoid duplicative work.
Streamline CMMC compliance with Vanta
Vanta is a comprehensive trust management solution with a CMMC compliance solution that offers out-of-the-box support for all certification levels, automates several compliance workflows, and reduces the inherent costs through features such as:
- Automated gap assessments
- Automated evidence collection supported by 375+ integrations
- Pre-mapped security controls aligned to NIST SP 800-171 and NIST SP 800-172
- Centralized tracking and real-time monitoring of CMMC requirements
- Prescriptive guidance across controls, policies, and documents
If you’ve implemented standards and regulations that overlap with CMMC, Vanta can automatically map the corresponding controls to help you avoid duplicative workflows and related costs.
Schedule a custom demo of Vanta’s CMMC solution today.
{{cta_simple33="/cta-blocks"}} | CMMC product page
A note from Vanta: Vanta is not a law firm, and this article does not constitute or contain legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship. When determining your obligations and compliance with respect to relevant laws and regulations, you should consult a licensed attorney.
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