Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1546025
AUGUST 2026 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 29 Executive buy-in and organizational alignment: CMMC compliance requires planning, budgeting, and decisions that affect the entire company. Without visible leadership support, employees tend to treat the work as a burden rather than a priority. Leadership will often need to make difficult calls, such as replacing legacy systems, changing estab- lished workflows, and allocating resources. The defined CMMC timeline means those decisions can't be deferred. Legacy systems: Older tools for storing or sharing customer files often fall short of CMMC require- ments. Migrating to compliant platforms is time- consuming and costly, and it's one of the most common issues across companies at every stage of compliance readiness. Workforce readiness: Getting employees to consistently follow new workflows after compliant solutions and policies are in place is a separate challenge from implementing those solutions. Behavioral change takes time. Training needs to be ongoing, tailored, and reinforced by leader- ship because management conformance directly shapes how seriously the rest of the organization takes new procedures. Sustaining compliance after certification: Treating certification as a one-time event is a common mistake. CMMC requires annual self-attestation and full recertification every three years. Evidence must be maintained, training must continue, and docu- mentation must be updated as systems change. Organizations that don't build this into normal oper- ations typically struggle at reassessment. Our Certification Process When we entered the formal certification phase, the preparation we had done over the prior years paid off. With most controls, documentation, and solutions already in place, the certification phase focused on closing remaining gaps and refining existing implementations. New business require- ments introduced mid-process necessitated adjust- ments to several systems and documentation sets, adding complexity for both the compliance team and employees. It's key to remember that no matter how prepared you may be, the organization must be flexible and expect changes. For the first certification, the standard questions were answered in full. The result was a clean certi- fication with all requirements satisfied and all docu- mentation complete. The effort was company-wide. Our IT team worked directly with our compliance partner to plan and implement changes while keeping the business running. Our employees adapted to new tools and procedures and applied them in their daily work rather than as a separate compliance exercise. Our leadership team stayed engaged throughout, from the early planning stages to the final stages of audit preparation. The Window for Preparation With fewer than 600 certified assessors available for an estimated 350,000 defense contractors, and C3PAOs already booked well into 2026, wait times for new clients are expected to exceed 18 months by Q3 2026. Companies that have not yet begun the process are working against a shrinking window. SMT007 Daniel Porton is the IT manager at San Francisco Circuits. Alex Danovich is the CEO of San Fran- cisco Circuits.