A lot of MSPs are looking at Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) and seeing opportunity. And for good reasons.
Defense work can be lucrative, and the clients are serious. While the stakes are certainly higher, it can look like the next step up for your business. But that doesn’t mean every MSP should jump right in.
CMMC isn’t just another little box to check. It puts real pressure on how your business actually runs. Your tools certainly matter, but so do your policies, your documentation, your access controls, your vendors, and your ability to prove what happened after the fact. That last part is where things tend to get uncomfortable.
There’s no doubt your team does great work, but if you rely on a lot of speed, memory, and “we know how it works around here” thinking, regulated work can expose that in a hurry. So, before you go after CMMC-related business, it’s encouraged to take a hard look at a few things first.
Can your business handle scrutiny?
Many MSPs talk about compliance like it’s a mere technical project. Unfortunately, it’s a lot more than that. It is an operating model.
Someone has to truly own it, and it can’t just be the person who happens to know the most or the tech lead carrying it on top of their other duties. It has to be someone with enough authority to enforce processes even when it slows people down, creates friction, or makes a customer request harder to fulfill.
That also means your business can’t depend on heroics. If your best people keep things together by sheer effort, that may work in a fast-moving service business. The problem is it won’t hold up as well when a client, assessor, or incident timeline asks for a clean record of who did what, what got approved, and whether processes were followed.
Also, if your vendors can’t clearly explain what part of the compliance burden their product supports, your team may end up doing a lot more guesswork than expected. CMMC requires MSPs to provide a cohesive view of “who does what” in the form of a Shared Responsibility Matrix (SRM). If your vendors can’t describe how to meet National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) SP 800-171 requirements using their tools, you’ll be on your own.
Do you know where sensitive data can end up?
This is where a lot of teams can get caught up in problems. As an MSP, you might say, “We don’t handle that kind of data.” But are you sure about that?
Keep in mind, files get attached to tickets, logs collect more than people realize, and security tools ingest a bunch of data. Plus, customers send the wrong things to the wrong place all the time. A support motion that seems normal can pull sensitive data into your stack before anyone stops to think about it. That’s the issue.
If your position is that your team shouldn’t handle certain kinds of data, your systems need to back that up. Guardrails are important. So are clear agreements with customers about what your tools are allowed to collect, store, or move.
You don’t want to find out halfway through an engagement that your tooling made you part of the problem.
Are your people controls strong enough?
Regulated work raises the bar on onboarding, offboarding, access reviews, training, and screening. If your customer needs to show who had authorized access to a system, and your internal records are sloppy, that’s far more than a paperwork problem. That’s a trust problem.
The same goes for environments with export-control concerns. If your clients handle International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR)- or Export Administration Regulation (EAR)-sensitive work, your internal practices need to support those restrictions cleanly.
Do your access habits match what you tell clients to do?
This is one of the easiest places to spot a maturity gap. It’s easy to tell customers to lock things down, but it’s harder to do it inside your own shop when everyone wants fewer clicks and faster access.
However, if your team still lives in a culture where too many people have too much privilege, that needs to be addressed. Shared admin habits, broad standing access, and fuzzy accountability are all problems in a regulated environment.
You want named accounts. You want MFA wherever it's needed. You want a clear separation between day-to-day work and elevated access. And you want a record that shows who took action and when. After all, if your customers are expected to live by least privilege, your team shouldn’t be the exception.
Can you show the work, not just describe it?
In less regulated environments, teams can get by with some version of, “Yes, we do that.” That answer appears weak once evidence matters.
Can you produce logs, access records, change history, training records, remediation records, and incident records without turning it into a scavenger hunt? Are timestamps consistent? Are systems configured in a way that makes the evidence trustworthy? Are client environments standardized enough that you can explain what “normal” looks like?
If the answer is mostly trapped in people’s heads, that’s a problem. CMMC work doesn’t just ask if you did the right thing. It asks if you can prove it.
Can your incident response hold up when the clock starts?
A response plan on paper is one thing. A real incident on a weekend is another.
If your client has reporting obligations tied to discovery windows, your team needs to know who gets the alert, who makes the call, who preserves evidence, who talks to the customer, and who helps keep the whole thing from turning into chaos.
More specifically, can your team beat the 72-hour clock? Under DFARS 252.204-7012, cyber incidents must be reported within 72 hours of discovery. This also means you need to submit malware samples and help with damage assessments.
To stay compliant, you need a response team on call 24/7. Don't let nights, weekends, or holidays risk your client's ability to meet this critical reporting deadline.
What if the answer is “no,” or “not yet”?
Not every MSP needs to pursue CMMC work directly. If supporting regulated defense environments isn’t the right fit for your business, that doesn’t mean you need to walk away from those customers entirely.
In many cases, the smarter move is to build a referral relationship with a CMMC-focused MSP that already has the operational maturity, documentation, and processes in place. That gives your DoD customers a better path forward without forcing your team into work it’s not ready to support.
Huntress can help connect you with the right partner if that’s the direction you want to take.
If you’re planning to move forward, don’t start from a blank page. A big part of the lift is documentation, and that work goes faster when you begin with proven blueprints. The more you can standardize early around roles, responsibilities, controls, and evidence, the less time your team will spend reinventing the process as it goes.
So, should your MSP pursue CMMC work?
Maybe. And if the answer is no, or not yet, that can still be the right call.
The right reason to do so isn’t that the market looks attractive. The right reason is that your business can handle the discipline that comes with it. You have real ownership. That means real processes, real controls, and real evidence. And a team that can stand confidently when someone takes a harder look.
If you’re not there yet, that’s fine. “Not yet” is a far better answer than saying "yes" too early and finding out later that your operation was never built for this kind of pressure.
CMMC can open doors. But it can also expose every place your MSP still depends on intuition to cover for weak systems. It’s better to figure that out now.
Additional CMMC resources from Huntress
Huntress can be used in CMMC Level 2 environments to help support 37 of 110 controls. To learn more, visit the Huntress CMMC page.
If you’re already a Huntress customer, you can also visit the Huntress Trust Center to download free documentation and resources.
Need a deeper conversation on the intricacies of CMMC? Check out the Free CMMC Expert Consultation partnerships that Huntress has put in place.
Ryan Bonner is the founder and CEO of DEFCERT. Ryan has led DFARS and CMMC compliance transformation projects for over 150 contractors in the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), often involving MSPs.