Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) compliance requires elaborate security and compliance workflows, especially if you don’t already have a mature security program or you wish to pursue a higher CMMC certification tier. To maintain compliance standards and implement the program’s many requirements, you may have to develop numerous new processes.
Many organizations run into issues when trying to achieve CMMC compliance manually, as it can be tedious and drain a team's time. The best practice is to automate as much of the processes as possible, preferably with the help of a CMMC compliance software solution.
If you're looking to automate CMMC compliance, read this guide to learn:
- What CMMC compliance automation can automate
- Why it’s beneficial
- How to achieve it
What exactly is CMMC compliance automation?
CMMC compliance automation involves using dedicated software to implement the program’s practices, demonstrate adherence to its requirements, and maintain certification efficiently. Instead of gathering evidence through scattered spreadsheets and email chains, you pull it automatically from the software you already use.
What teams tend to underestimate is that this work never stops. CMMC doesn't grade you at a single moment in time. It expects continuous adherence, which means your controls need to keep working between assessments, not just on the day someone checks. Good automation matches that expectation by catching drift as it happens rather than letting it pile up for an annual scramble.
Handling that ongoing load is easier when one platform covers more than CMMC. Most of these tools support many frameworks at once, which helps because CMMC Level 2 maps almost directly onto NIST 800-171. If you've already done the work for one, a good platform reuses it for the other, so you're not solving the same problem twice.
What work can be automated with CMMC compliance automation software?
Automation is good at the work that's repeatable and rules-based, which covers a large share of what CMMC asks for. These processes account for most of the time you'll save, and a capable platform handles all of them.
Gap assessments
Comparing your existing practices against the full set of CMMC compliance requirements is slow work by hand, especially once you account for every way your systems, people, and locations touch Federal Contract Information and Controlled Unclassified Information. Compliance software gives you a clear view of your current security program and flags where you fall short, so you find the deficiencies in hours rather than weeks.
Security policy creation
Capable platforms ship with foundational policy templates, guidance, and approval workflows out of the box. Instead of writing every document from a blank page, you start from a structure that already aligns with CMMC's prescribed practices and adapt it to how your organization actually runs.
Evidence collection
Traditional CMMC documentation gathering means pulling proof from a dozen systems, with everything scattered across spreadsheets and email chains. Software centralizes all of it in one hub and pulls evidence from your connected systems on a set schedule, which makes it far easier to keep proof current and share it with the people who need it.
Control testing and monitoring
CMMC doesn't grade you at a single moment in time. It expects continuous adherence, which means your controls need to keep working between assessments, not just on the day someone checks. Automated tests run at set frequencies and give you real-time insight into your security posture, so you catch drift as it happens instead of discovering it during an audit.
POA&M tracking and management
A Plan of Action and Milestones logs every control you haven't fully met yet, with owners and target dates attached. Software tracks these items, flags due dates, and updates status as you close gaps. That matters because your POA&M is a formal part of the assessment process, and letting it go stale is an easy way to trip up later.
User access reviews
Periodic access reviews are a recurring control requirement, and doing them by hand means assembling spreadsheets every cycle. Platforms pull access data straight from your identity provider and walk you through the review on a schedule, so the work gets done consistently and leaves a clean record behind.
Risk assessments
A platform can structure and track your risk register, scoring each risk and mapping it to the controls that address it. That keeps the process organized and repeatable, which means your risk work stays current instead of becoming a yearly fire drill before an assessment.
Cross-framework control mapping
If you've already done SOC 2, ISO 27001, or NIST 800-171, a platform reuses that work for the overlapping CMMC controls automatically. Since CMMC Level 2 maps almost directly onto NIST 800-171, this is one of the biggest time-savers available, and it spares you from solving the same control twice.
Benefits of CMMC compliance automation
“Automating processes for any framework, including CMMC, helps reduce the room for human error and offers a streamlined way of approaching compliance management operations within an organization.”
Automating CMMC compliance streamlines your workflows and increases visibility into your security practices and controls. The specific advantages include:
- Increased efficiency: By outsourcing manual busywork to capable software, you can drastically increase the efficiency of compliance, security, and other teams involved in the CMMC certification process
- Less pressure on contributing teams: Automation helps your teams remove tedious tasks from their daily workflows, which frees up their time so their expertise can be put toward more impactful work
- Faster certification: Compliance automation can speed up CMMC certification timelines by removing time-consuming processes like monitoring individual practices or gathering evidence manually
- Cost savings: While the investment in compliance automation might seem significant, it typically pays off by absorbing costs associated with process inefficiencies and unaddressed compliance gaps
- Simplified compliance maintenance: After obtaining the initial CMMC certificate, you can use automation software to monitor your practices and ensure streamlined compliance affirmations and recertifications for all levels
Most compliance automation solutions aren’t CMMC-specific—they support multiple frameworks and standards, helping you manage complex compliance workflows within a single platform. They remove duplicative work and bring visibility to your entire compliance program in one platform.
4 steps to successful CMMC compliance automation
Knowing what automation can and can't do is the easy part. Putting it to work is where teams either save months or waste budget, and the difference usually comes down to sequence. Scope before you shop, and automate the right work instead of every workflow you can find. These four steps keep the effort in the order that actually pays off:
Step 1: Scope your CUI and FCI boundary
Start by mapping where Federal Contract Information and Controlled Unclassified Information actually live across your systems, people, and locations. This is the groundwork that makes everything after it efficient, because automation pointed at a sprawling environment wastes money on processes that don't need to be in scope. Decide here whether a CUI enclave fits your operation or whether your team works better handling regulated data in place. The boundary you draw now sets the size of every task that follows.
Step 2: Review your compliance and security workflows
Before exploring compliance automation solutions, identify which processes to streamline by conducting a thorough review of your security and compliance workflows.
While priorities vary by organization, processes like documentation and evidence collection are widely recognized as sources of inefficiencies. These often include tasks with high potential for streamlining and automation, such as:
- Policy reviews
- Technical control tests
- Risk assessments
Compliance automation software combines the results of these activities to create a single source of truth for demonstrating CMMC compliance. It also makes it easy to share the necessary security and compliance documentation with stakeholders to build trust more effortlessly.
Of course, your automation scope can extend far beyond these processes. To get the full picture of your workflow and identify the key inefficiencies, seek input from your IT and compliance teams, as well as other departments impacted by CMMC.
{{cta_withimage22="/cta-modules"}} | The audit ready checklist
Step 3: Choose and implement the right automation solution
Your chosen compliance platform can make or break the effectiveness of your automation efforts. While exploring numerous solutions can offer flexibility to meet various priorities, it can also create decision-making fatigue if not approached strategically.
To simplify research and find the right platform, use the following criteria:
- Features: Look for a compliance platform with features that align to your technical and functional process needs. An effective solution should, at minimum, include functionalities like policy building, evidence collection, and documentation management.
- Cost: CMMC compliance can be costly—a challenge for budget-constrained teams. It’s crucial to find a platform that doesn’t damage your bottom line by exposing you to hidden costs. Avoid paying a premium for features you don’t need, especially if you already have software that handles those tasks.
- Integrations: Speaking of existing software, your compliance platform must integrate seamlessly with your core systems. Otherwise, you might encounter bottlenecks that result in manual workflows and monitoring, which undermine the purpose of adopting automation software.
- Support: The right compliance automation provider doesn’t only offer a software solution—it should also give you access to a customer success team who can support you throughout the CMMC certification process.
- Ongoing updates: Your automation platform must stay up-to-date on the latest framework requirements and industry standards to support long-term CMMC maintenance.
Step 4: Monitor automation results
Tracking the results of your compliance automation strategy can be challenging because there aren’t many KPIs to quantify them. As an example, a common metric organizations use is the number of critical or high vulnerabilities detected compared to those that have been remediated. However, this KPI only shows a fragment of the entire effect of automation.
One way to get a broader picture is to document and compare your workflows before and after process automation. Look at the following factors to understand the impact of automation:
- The time necessary to complete specific CMMC compliance activities
- Accuracy of the results collected manually vs. automatically
- The number of specific tasks and activities removed as a result of automation
You can connect these factors to the corresponding costs to clarify the value of automation. Doing so makes it easier to justify the investment to executives and other decision-makers.
Common CMMC compliance automation challenges
Automation pays off, but the rollout rarely goes perfectly. Knowing the common roadblocks ahead of time lets you plan around them instead of discovering them mid-project. Four come up again and again.
Data integrity and accuracy
A platform fed bad or inconsistent data produces unreliable results that can mislead your whole program. The fix is to validate before you trust the output. Build structured processes and technical checks so the tool runs on accurate inputs from the start, and your automated results will hold up under scrutiny.
Transition to new processes
Teams used to manual compliance work often face a learning curve when they switch to automated workflows. You can ease this by phasing the change in. Choose a platform with a gentle setup and onboard your people gradually rather than flipping everything at once, so the new way of working sticks.
Lack of training
Staff who don't know how to use the software properly can amplify inefficiencies instead of removing them. Train your in-scope teams to head this off. Make sure everyone whose work touches CUI understands how the tool fits their day-to-day before you start relying on it for evidence.
Unclear ownership
Automation alone won't sort out who's responsible for what, and gaps appear when roles are fuzzy. Assign roles early to avoid them. Define who owns each part of the workflow so the automation slots into a clear structure instead of floating between teams.
None of these are reasons to avoid automating. They're reasons to choose your platform and plan your rollout with care. The right software, paired with a clear plan for your people, heads off most of these problems before they start.
{{cta_withimage27="/cta-modules"}} | CMMC compliance checklist
Automate CMMC compliance tasks with Vanta
Vanta is a trust management platform that streamlines CMMC compliance and provides clear guidance for achieving certification more efficiently and with less friction. It does so through a robust CMMC solution with features such as:
- Out-of-the-box support and prescriptive guidance for all certification levels
- Automated gap assessments on a real-time dashboard
- Automated evidence collection powered by 400+ integrations
- Pre-built controls and policy templates
- Centralized tracking and monitoring of CMMC requirements
Vanta automatically maps the existing controls you might’ve implemented from other standards to the corresponding CMMC requirements, which helps you avoid duplicative workflows.
In addition to Vanta’s experts, who can provide continuous support for your compliance workflows, you’ll have access to Vanta’s partner network to find reputable external auditors necessary for Level 2 and Level 3 certification.
Schedule a custom demo of Vanta’s CMMC solution to learn more.
{{cta_simple33="/cta-modules"}} | 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 compliance automation: Benefits, steps, and more
Looking to streamline the work for CMMC?
Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) compliance requires elaborate security and compliance workflows, especially if you don’t already have a mature security program or you wish to pursue a higher CMMC certification tier. To maintain compliance standards and implement the program’s many requirements, you may have to develop numerous new processes.
Many organizations run into issues when trying to achieve CMMC compliance manually, as it can be tedious and drain a team's time. The best practice is to automate as much of the processes as possible, preferably with the help of a CMMC compliance software solution.
If you're looking to automate CMMC compliance, read this guide to learn:
- What CMMC compliance automation can automate
- Why it’s beneficial
- How to achieve it
What exactly is CMMC compliance automation?
CMMC compliance automation involves using dedicated software to implement the program’s practices, demonstrate adherence to its requirements, and maintain certification efficiently. Instead of gathering evidence through scattered spreadsheets and email chains, you pull it automatically from the software you already use.
What teams tend to underestimate is that this work never stops. CMMC doesn't grade you at a single moment in time. It expects continuous adherence, which means your controls need to keep working between assessments, not just on the day someone checks. Good automation matches that expectation by catching drift as it happens rather than letting it pile up for an annual scramble.
Handling that ongoing load is easier when one platform covers more than CMMC. Most of these tools support many frameworks at once, which helps because CMMC Level 2 maps almost directly onto NIST 800-171. If you've already done the work for one, a good platform reuses it for the other, so you're not solving the same problem twice.
What work can be automated with CMMC compliance automation software?
Automation is good at the work that's repeatable and rules-based, which covers a large share of what CMMC asks for. These processes account for most of the time you'll save, and a capable platform handles all of them.
Gap assessments
Comparing your existing practices against the full set of CMMC compliance requirements is slow work by hand, especially once you account for every way your systems, people, and locations touch Federal Contract Information and Controlled Unclassified Information. Compliance software gives you a clear view of your current security program and flags where you fall short, so you find the deficiencies in hours rather than weeks.
Security policy creation
Capable platforms ship with foundational policy templates, guidance, and approval workflows out of the box. Instead of writing every document from a blank page, you start from a structure that already aligns with CMMC's prescribed practices and adapt it to how your organization actually runs.
Evidence collection
Traditional CMMC documentation gathering means pulling proof from a dozen systems, with everything scattered across spreadsheets and email chains. Software centralizes all of it in one hub and pulls evidence from your connected systems on a set schedule, which makes it far easier to keep proof current and share it with the people who need it.
Control testing and monitoring
CMMC doesn't grade you at a single moment in time. It expects continuous adherence, which means your controls need to keep working between assessments, not just on the day someone checks. Automated tests run at set frequencies and give you real-time insight into your security posture, so you catch drift as it happens instead of discovering it during an audit.
POA&M tracking and management
A Plan of Action and Milestones logs every control you haven't fully met yet, with owners and target dates attached. Software tracks these items, flags due dates, and updates status as you close gaps. That matters because your POA&M is a formal part of the assessment process, and letting it go stale is an easy way to trip up later.
User access reviews
Periodic access reviews are a recurring control requirement, and doing them by hand means assembling spreadsheets every cycle. Platforms pull access data straight from your identity provider and walk you through the review on a schedule, so the work gets done consistently and leaves a clean record behind.
Risk assessments
A platform can structure and track your risk register, scoring each risk and mapping it to the controls that address it. That keeps the process organized and repeatable, which means your risk work stays current instead of becoming a yearly fire drill before an assessment.
Cross-framework control mapping
If you've already done SOC 2, ISO 27001, or NIST 800-171, a platform reuses that work for the overlapping CMMC controls automatically. Since CMMC Level 2 maps almost directly onto NIST 800-171, this is one of the biggest time-savers available, and it spares you from solving the same control twice.
Benefits of CMMC compliance automation
“Automating processes for any framework, including CMMC, helps reduce the room for human error and offers a streamlined way of approaching compliance management operations within an organization.”
Automating CMMC compliance streamlines your workflows and increases visibility into your security practices and controls. The specific advantages include:
- Increased efficiency: By outsourcing manual busywork to capable software, you can drastically increase the efficiency of compliance, security, and other teams involved in the CMMC certification process
- Less pressure on contributing teams: Automation helps your teams remove tedious tasks from their daily workflows, which frees up their time so their expertise can be put toward more impactful work
- Faster certification: Compliance automation can speed up CMMC certification timelines by removing time-consuming processes like monitoring individual practices or gathering evidence manually
- Cost savings: While the investment in compliance automation might seem significant, it typically pays off by absorbing costs associated with process inefficiencies and unaddressed compliance gaps
- Simplified compliance maintenance: After obtaining the initial CMMC certificate, you can use automation software to monitor your practices and ensure streamlined compliance affirmations and recertifications for all levels
Most compliance automation solutions aren’t CMMC-specific—they support multiple frameworks and standards, helping you manage complex compliance workflows within a single platform. They remove duplicative work and bring visibility to your entire compliance program in one platform.
4 steps to successful CMMC compliance automation
Knowing what automation can and can't do is the easy part. Putting it to work is where teams either save months or waste budget, and the difference usually comes down to sequence. Scope before you shop, and automate the right work instead of every workflow you can find. These four steps keep the effort in the order that actually pays off:
Step 1: Scope your CUI and FCI boundary
Start by mapping where Federal Contract Information and Controlled Unclassified Information actually live across your systems, people, and locations. This is the groundwork that makes everything after it efficient, because automation pointed at a sprawling environment wastes money on processes that don't need to be in scope. Decide here whether a CUI enclave fits your operation or whether your team works better handling regulated data in place. The boundary you draw now sets the size of every task that follows.
Step 2: Review your compliance and security workflows
Before exploring compliance automation solutions, identify which processes to streamline by conducting a thorough review of your security and compliance workflows.
While priorities vary by organization, processes like documentation and evidence collection are widely recognized as sources of inefficiencies. These often include tasks with high potential for streamlining and automation, such as:
- Policy reviews
- Technical control tests
- Risk assessments
Compliance automation software combines the results of these activities to create a single source of truth for demonstrating CMMC compliance. It also makes it easy to share the necessary security and compliance documentation with stakeholders to build trust more effortlessly.
Of course, your automation scope can extend far beyond these processes. To get the full picture of your workflow and identify the key inefficiencies, seek input from your IT and compliance teams, as well as other departments impacted by CMMC.
{{cta_withimage22="/cta-modules"}} | The audit ready checklist
Step 3: Choose and implement the right automation solution
Your chosen compliance platform can make or break the effectiveness of your automation efforts. While exploring numerous solutions can offer flexibility to meet various priorities, it can also create decision-making fatigue if not approached strategically.
To simplify research and find the right platform, use the following criteria:
- Features: Look for a compliance platform with features that align to your technical and functional process needs. An effective solution should, at minimum, include functionalities like policy building, evidence collection, and documentation management.
- Cost: CMMC compliance can be costly—a challenge for budget-constrained teams. It’s crucial to find a platform that doesn’t damage your bottom line by exposing you to hidden costs. Avoid paying a premium for features you don’t need, especially if you already have software that handles those tasks.
- Integrations: Speaking of existing software, your compliance platform must integrate seamlessly with your core systems. Otherwise, you might encounter bottlenecks that result in manual workflows and monitoring, which undermine the purpose of adopting automation software.
- Support: The right compliance automation provider doesn’t only offer a software solution—it should also give you access to a customer success team who can support you throughout the CMMC certification process.
- Ongoing updates: Your automation platform must stay up-to-date on the latest framework requirements and industry standards to support long-term CMMC maintenance.
Step 4: Monitor automation results
Tracking the results of your compliance automation strategy can be challenging because there aren’t many KPIs to quantify them. As an example, a common metric organizations use is the number of critical or high vulnerabilities detected compared to those that have been remediated. However, this KPI only shows a fragment of the entire effect of automation.
One way to get a broader picture is to document and compare your workflows before and after process automation. Look at the following factors to understand the impact of automation:
- The time necessary to complete specific CMMC compliance activities
- Accuracy of the results collected manually vs. automatically
- The number of specific tasks and activities removed as a result of automation
You can connect these factors to the corresponding costs to clarify the value of automation. Doing so makes it easier to justify the investment to executives and other decision-makers.
Common CMMC compliance automation challenges
Automation pays off, but the rollout rarely goes perfectly. Knowing the common roadblocks ahead of time lets you plan around them instead of discovering them mid-project. Four come up again and again.
Data integrity and accuracy
A platform fed bad or inconsistent data produces unreliable results that can mislead your whole program. The fix is to validate before you trust the output. Build structured processes and technical checks so the tool runs on accurate inputs from the start, and your automated results will hold up under scrutiny.
Transition to new processes
Teams used to manual compliance work often face a learning curve when they switch to automated workflows. You can ease this by phasing the change in. Choose a platform with a gentle setup and onboard your people gradually rather than flipping everything at once, so the new way of working sticks.
Lack of training
Staff who don't know how to use the software properly can amplify inefficiencies instead of removing them. Train your in-scope teams to head this off. Make sure everyone whose work touches CUI understands how the tool fits their day-to-day before you start relying on it for evidence.
Unclear ownership
Automation alone won't sort out who's responsible for what, and gaps appear when roles are fuzzy. Assign roles early to avoid them. Define who owns each part of the workflow so the automation slots into a clear structure instead of floating between teams.
None of these are reasons to avoid automating. They're reasons to choose your platform and plan your rollout with care. The right software, paired with a clear plan for your people, heads off most of these problems before they start.
{{cta_withimage27="/cta-modules"}} | CMMC compliance checklist
Automate CMMC compliance tasks with Vanta
Vanta is a trust management platform that streamlines CMMC compliance and provides clear guidance for achieving certification more efficiently and with less friction. It does so through a robust CMMC solution with features such as:
- Out-of-the-box support and prescriptive guidance for all certification levels
- Automated gap assessments on a real-time dashboard
- Automated evidence collection powered by 400+ integrations
- Pre-built controls and policy templates
- Centralized tracking and monitoring of CMMC requirements
Vanta automatically maps the existing controls you might’ve implemented from other standards to the corresponding CMMC requirements, which helps you avoid duplicative workflows.
In addition to Vanta’s experts, who can provide continuous support for your compliance workflows, you’ll have access to Vanta’s partner network to find reputable external auditors necessary for Level 2 and Level 3 certification.
Schedule a custom demo of Vanta’s CMMC solution to learn more.
{{cta_simple33="/cta-modules"}} | 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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Introduction to CMMC
CMMC requirements
CMMC certification process
CMMC levels
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