critical misses

Preventing the Missteps That Lead to False Starts or Failed Assessments

There are controls that, if not fully met, will result in a failed assessment. We help you understand the subtle differences between look-alike domains, how assessors verify each requirement, and where overlap can create confusion.

By clarifying these distinctions and guiding you in mapping the right evidence to the right objectives, we help you avoid the ‘close enough’ assumptions that lead to objective-level misses that stop the assessment.

CMMC Level 1 Requires 17 Safeguards 15 Controls

The official FAR clause lists 15 safeguards, but CMMC documentation often references 17 practices. Here is why: 

CMMC inherited the DoD’s earlier mapping from the DFARS 252.204-21 “Basic Safeguarding” table, where two of the FAR requirements were split into multiple CMMC practice IDs during modeling. They are not additional requirements—just a structural carryover from the original DoD-to-NIST mapping exercise.