Pass Your CMMC Assessment the First Time
Find every asset in scope. Test NIST 800-171 controls against real infrastructure. Generate audit evidence continuously — not the week before your C3PAO arrives.
What Makes CMMC Hard
CMMC is now a contract requirement. No certification, no award. For most contractors handling CUI, that means implementing 110 NIST 800-171 controls across 14 families and proving it to a C3PAO.
Most teams understand the requirements. The hard part is proving compliance across every asset, identity and system that touches CUI not once, but continuously.
.svg)
How CMMC Level 2 and NIST SP 800-171 relate
CMMC Level 2 = NIST 800-171 Rev 2. Same 110 controls. CMMC just adds mandatory third-party verification.
Before: self-reported SPRS scores. Now: a C3PAO checks, a senior official signs under False Claims Act liability and non-compliance means no contract.
If you're working toward 800-171, you're working toward CMMC Level 2.
Challenges we see contractors run into
Scoping
You need to inventory every asset that touches CUI. Manual discovery misses shadow IT, ephemeral cloud resources and third-party connections. Under-scope and you fail. Over-scope and you waste money.
Point-in-time audits
A senior official must annually affirm continuous compliance personally, under False Claims Act liability. A single assessment snapshot doesn't prove your controls worked the other 364 days. DOJ has already brought enforcement actions.
Evidence collection
Level 2 requires 300–500 evidence artifacts across 320+ objectives. Fewer than 85 C3PAOs serve 80,000+ contractors. Spreadsheet-based evidence collection takes hundreds of hours and still leaves gaps.
Three Things JupiterOne Does That Make CMMC Easier
JupiterOne combines cyber asset management with continuous controls monitoring (CCM). That gives defense contractors the two things CMMC assessments actually require: knowing what's in scope and proving controls are working.
Every Asset in Your CMMC Scope
JupiterOne discovers and classifies every asset across your environment — cloud, SaaS, identity, endpoints, code repos and network — through 200+ native integrations.
Our graph maps relationships which users access which systems, which systems process CUI, which configurations protect it. Not an asset list. A map of how everything connects, giving assessors a compliance scope they can verify.
Automated discovery
Across cloud, SaaS, on-prem, identity and code
CUI scope mapping
Trace data flows across systems, users and third parties via graph relationships
Asset classification
Asset classification into CUI Assets, Security Protection Assets and Contractor Risk Managed Assets — the categories your C3PAO evaluates
Always-current inventory
Updates continuously, not a quarterly snapshot
NIST 800-171 Controls Against Real Infrastructure
The federal government is moving toward rules as code. JupiterOne already does it.
Encode each NIST 800-171 control as a J1QL query — a testable rule that runs against your asset graph. Instead of "do we have a policy for this?", JupiterOne checks: "is this control implemented across every in-scope asset right now?"
GRC platforms check whether a policy document exists. JupiterOne checks whether it's enforced in production — across every cloud account, identity provider and endpoint.
Controls as code
NIST 800-171 requirements become J1QL queries that test real infrastructure, not policy docs
Continuous testing
Automatically on a recurring cycle, not just at assessment time
Automated evidence
Every test produces timestamped, audit-ready evidence with 365-day retention
Gap identification
See exactly which controls and assets are non-compliant before your assessor does
POA&M readiness
Know which controls meet the 80% threshold (88/110) and which need remediation plans
Audit Evidence Automatically, Every Day
CMMC requires triennial assessments, annual affirmations and continuous monitoring in between. A senior official signs each affirmation under False Claims Act liability.
Every control test produces timestamped evidence. Every gap triggers an alert. Every remediation is tracked.
365-day evidence retention
Full audit trail stored — no retroactive evidence collection
Real-time compliance dashboards
Shared view of control status for security, legal, procurement and executive teams
Automated drift alerts
Fix compliance gaps in hours, not months
Assessment-ready reports
Aligned to all 14 control families and 320+ objectives
Cross-functional visibility
Every stakeholder sees the same compliance picture
Which NIST 800-171 Control Families JupiterOne Covers
NIST SP 800-171 organizes 110 security controls into 14 families. JupiterOne provides direct platform support for 8 of them, the technical controls that are hardest to implement and prove manually.
| control family | controls | JupiterOne Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| Access Control (AC) | 22 | Direct — Identity mapping, privilege analysis, access relationship graphing |
| Audit & Accountability (AU) | 9 | Direct — Automated evidence collection, audit trail, 365-day retention |
| Configuration Management (CM) | 9 | Direct — Drift detection, misconfiguration identification, baseline comparison |
| Identification & Authentication (IA) | 11 | Direct — MFA visibility, identity trust relationships, authentication policy verification |
| Risk Assessment (RA) | 3 | Direct — Continuous risk scoring, vulnerability context, asset-based risk analysis |
| Security Assessment (CA) | 4 | Direct — Continuous controls monitoring, automated testing, evidence generation |
| System & Communications Protection (SC) | 16 | Direct — Network mapping, encryption status, segmentation validation |
| System & Information Integrity (SI) | 7 | Direct — Vulnerability detection, patch tracking, anomaly identification |
| Incident Response (IR) | 3 | Supported — Asset context for investigation and response |
| Maintenance (MA) | 6 | Supported — System maintenance status tracking |
Questions We Hear from Defense Contractors
Does JupiterOne have a pre-built CMMC framework?
JupiterOne supports NIST SP 800-171 Rev 2 — the exact control framework that CMMC Level 2 requires. The controls are identical: same 110 requirements, same 14 families, same 320+ assessment objectives. CMMC Level 2 readiness is NIST 800-171 compliance plus a third-party assessment. JupiterOne handles the compliance side. You can also upload custom frameworks to the platform.
We're still in the scoping phase. Is it too early?
Scoping is where JupiterOne delivers the most immediate value. The platform discovers and maps every asset in your environment, identifies which systems touch CUI, and classifies assets into the categories your assessor evaluates. You get an accurate compliance boundary before you spend anything on remediation.
How is JupiterOne different from GRC tools?
GRC platforms manage policies, assign tasks and organize evidence uploads. JupiterOne discovers assets, tests controls against real system configurations and generates evidence from production state. Many organizations use both — JupiterOne generates the evidence, the GRC tool organizes it.
We already have an asset management tool. Do we need JupiterOne too?
Asset management tools discover and inventory assets. JupiterOne adds continuous controls monitoring — encoding NIST 800-171 controls as testable queries, running them against the asset graph and generating audit evidence automatically. If you already know what you have, JupiterOne helps you prove those assets are compliant.
What about on-premises assets?
JupiterOne integrates with on-premises infrastructure, cloud platforms, SaaS applications, identity providers, endpoints and code repositories. CMMC compliance requires full-surface visibility and JupiterOne's 200+ integrations cover the environments defense contractors actually operate in.
See How JupiterOne Works for CMMC
Find every asset. Test every control. Generate audit evidence automatically.