CMMC Ready Now Sponsors 100 Free CMMC Gap Assessment Grants for Small Defense Contractors

LEESBURG, VA, May 12, 2026 – CMMC Ready Now today announced a $500,000 in-kind sponsorship with Cyber Grants Alliance (CGA), a nonprofit that delivers cybersecurity resources to small and mid-sized businesses. Through the sponsorship, 100 free CMMC gap assessments, each worth $5,000, will be made available to qualifying defense contractors, subcontractors, and manufacturers in the U.S. Department of Defense supply chain.

Each grant covers a full evaluation against all 110 security controls in NIST SP 800-171 Rev 2, the framework at the core of CMMC Level 2 certification. Grants go out on a first come, first served basis. With the CMMC Phase 2 rollout now in force, the goal is to give smaller companies a clear read on where they stand before certification requirements start showing up in contracts they want to win.

Why We Built This Program

Small businesses make up more than 70 percent of the defense industrial base. Machine shops, fabricators, engineering firms, technical documentation providers, logistics companies. Most of them have been in the defense supply chain for years and never had to think seriously about a formal cybersecurity program. CMMC changed that.

A full CMMC Level 2 C3PAO assessment runs between $105,000 and $118,000. Total compliance costs can push past $150,000 when you factor in the remediation work, policy development, and implementation. For a 25-person machine shop or a small engineering firm working on thin government contract margins, spending that kind of money to stay in a market that used to take them for granted is a hard sell.

The numbers back it up. Industry projections put the number of businesses that could exit the defense market between 2025 and 2027 somewhere between 33,000 and 44,000. That is roughly 15 to 20 percent of the DIB. Not because they do not want to comply, but because they cannot see a path to doing it at a cost that makes sense for their business.

A gap assessment fixes the visibility problem. It tells you exactly which of the 110 controls you are meeting, which ones you are not, and what closing each gap will actually take. Once you have that, you can make a real plan. Budget it, schedule it, and get a C3PAO on the calendar before the waitlist gets out of hand. Without it, you are guessing, and the guesses tend to be either too expensive or too optimistic.

What Each Grant Covers

Grant recipients get a complete CMMC gap assessment through the CMMC Ready Now platform at no charge. It covers all 110 NIST SP 800-171 controls across 14 control families, including access control, incident response, system and communications protection, and risk assessment. No dedicated IT staff needed. Most companies finish in under 30 minutes.

• ✓Full evaluation against all 110 NIST SP 800-171 Rev 2 controls across 14 control families
• ✓Review of technical infrastructure, policies, procedures, and day-to-day operational practices
• ✓Control-by-control gap identification, sorted by risk level and remediation effort
• ✓A complete picture of where the organization stands against CMMC Level 2 requirements
• ✓Runs on the CMMC Ready Now platform, completable in under 30 minutes with no dedicated IT staff
• ✓Output feeds directly into SSP and POA&M development

Who Can Apply

Grants are open to small and medium-sized businesses that fit any of the following:

• Defense Industrial Base contractors and subcontractors
• Manufacturers in the DoD supply chain that handle technical data or CUI
• Government contractors working toward or renewing contracts with CMMC requirements
• Businesses that have not yet gone through a professional CMMC readiness assessment

Companies with fewer than 100 employees get priority. Applications are reviewed as they come in and grants go out until all 100 are claimed.

Why Now

CMMC Phase 2 is not coming. It is here. Contracting officers are putting DFARS 252.204-7021 into new solicitations right now, and that clause makes Level 2 certification a hard requirement before a contract gets signed. The C3PAO assessment pipeline is already filling up, and it is going to get a lot more crowded in the back half of 2026.

Contractors who run their gap assessment this spring have a real shot at getting remediation done, building out their SSP, and landing a C3PAO slot before the scheduling backlog makes that difficult. Contractors who wait until fall will be paying more, moving faster, and competing for assessor time with everyone else who also waited.

How to Apply

Applications are open now through Cyber Grants Alliance at cybergrantsalliance.org/cmmc-gap-assessment-grant. Once approved, applicants get a grant code and can start their assessment the same day. First come, first served until all 100 grants are out.