CMMC Compliance in Newport News, VA
CMMC Level 1, 2, and 3 readiness for Newport News shipbuilding suppliers, engineering firms, and the Huntington Ingalls Industries supply chain. Petronella Technology Group's CMMC-RP certified team guides Hampton Roads contractors from gap assessment to C3PAO certification, with the engineering-firm focus that the carrier and submarine programs demand.
The Huntington Ingalls Supply Chain and Why CMMC Hits Hardest Here
Newport News is anchored by Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), the largest industrial employer in the Commonwealth of Virginia. HII's Newport News Shipbuilding division is the sole United States designer and builder of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and is one of only two builders of nuclear-powered submarines for the U.S. Navy. The supply chain that feeds those programs runs thousands of subcontractors across Hampton Roads, the Commonwealth, and well beyond. Every link in that chain that touches Controlled Unclassified Information is in scope for CMMC under 32 CFR Part 170.
Ford-Class Aircraft Carrier Program
The Gerald R. Ford-class is the next-generation U.S. Navy nuclear-powered aircraft carrier line, designed and built exclusively at Newport News Shipbuilding. Engineering drawings, propulsion-system specifications, electromagnetic aircraft launch system data, and combat-system integration packages flow down to subcontractors as Covered Defense Information. Every drawing-receiving sub is a CMMC Level 2 candidate.
Virginia-Class Submarine Program
HII teams with General Dynamics Electric Boat on the Virginia-class fast-attack submarine. Newport News fabricates major hull modules and integrates critical reactor and sensor systems. The submarine supply chain pulls in precision machinists, weld specialists, sensor integrators, and engineering analysis firms who handle some of the most sensitive CUI in the Defense Industrial Base.
Newport News Industrial Corporation
Newport News Industrial Corporation is an HII subsidiary that services commercial nuclear, energy, and federal customers. Its civilian and defense workstreams routinely cross, which makes scoping decisions about which information flows are CUI - and which are not - a critical part of the CMMC engagement. Petronella Technology Group has built scoping playbooks specifically for dual-use engineering shops.
Engineering Firms Everywhere
The Newport News supply base is unusually dense with engineering firms. Naval-architecture shops, structural engineering consultancies, electrical-system designers, hydrodynamics modelers, materials-science labs, and acoustic-signature analysts all show up on HII's purchase orders. Petronella Technology Group's engineering-firm ICP focus and existing engineering-sector client work make this the natural fit for the Hampton Roads CMMC market.
Ford-Class vs Virginia-Class: Two Distinct CUI Profiles
A Newport News supplier feeding both programs deals with two materially different CUI profiles. The carrier program emphasizes large-scale integration, electromagnetic launch systems, and combat-system data packages. The submarine program emphasizes propulsion confidentiality, acoustic signature management, and naval nuclear propulsion information. Petronella Technology Group scopes the boundary with both program profiles in mind so the same engineering firm can serve carrier work and submarine work without redrawing the line.
Ford-Class CUI Profile
- Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) and Advanced Arresting Gear engineering and integration data.
- Dual Band Radar specifications and combat-system integration packages with Aegis interfaces.
- Large-scale hull and superstructure engineering, including weapons-elevator and aircraft-handling drawings.
- Reactor compartment civilian-facing engineering at the carrier program level, with strict separation from Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information.
Virginia-Class CUI Profile
- Acoustic-signature analysis, quieting research, and hull-form hydrodynamics that drive submarine survivability.
- Sensor packages including towed-array sonar, Photonics Mast, and combat-system integration with the Virginia Payload Module.
- Reactor support and propulsion documentation in the civilian engineering layer adjacent to Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information.
- Block IV and Block V Virginia Payload Module integration data flowing to the supplier base through HII and Electric Boat.
The practical implication for Newport News engineering subs: the same NIST 800-171 control set covers both program profiles, but the procedure layer underneath the policy needs to reflect the actual data types and handling workflows your team uses on each contract line. Petronella Technology Group writes the procedures to match the work, not the other way around.
CMMC 2.0 for Navy Shipbuilding Subs
A 2-minute overview of CMMC 2.0 levels and what HII supply-chain subcontractors should be doing this quarter to stay in front of the carrier and submarine program assessment timelines.
DFARS 7012 and NIST 800-171 for Shipbuilding Subs
DFARS clause 252.204-7012 has applied to every Department of Defense contractor handling Covered Defense Information since 2017. CMMC under 32 CFR Part 170 layers third-party assessment on top of that obligation. For Newport News shipbuilding subs, the data types involved are unusually sensitive, the export-control overlay with ITAR is unusually broad, and the scoping decisions are unusually consequential.
What 252.204-7012 Requires
- Implement the 110 security requirements of NIST SP 800-171 across every covered contractor information system that processes, stores, or transmits Covered Defense Information.
- Report cyber incidents that affect Covered Defense Information to DoD via DIBNet within 72 hours of discovery.
- Preserve and protect forensic images of affected systems for 90 days for DoD review on demand.
- Flow the same protection obligations down to every subcontractor at every tier that also touches CUI - the obligation does not stop at tier one.
Shipbuilding-Specific CUI Categories
- Carrier-program engineering drawings, structural specifications, and combat-system integration packages.
- Submarine propulsion, reactor support documentation, acoustic-signature analysis, and quieting research.
- Sensor, electronic warfare, and combat-system technical data packages that frequently carry ITAR designations on top of CUI.
- Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information categories that carry additional protection requirements beyond standard CUI handling.
For Newport News engineering subs, ITAR and CUI are not separate problems. They are the same drawing, looked at from two regulatory angles. Petronella Technology Group's flagship CMMC compliance pillar walks through the full overlap, and our cybersecurity practice wraps the surrounding operational program.
Where ITAR and CMMC Meet on a Newport News Drawing
For Newport News engineering firms, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and CMMC are not competing frameworks. They are two regulatory views of the same drawing. ITAR governs the export and disclosure of defense articles and defense services - including technical data such as engineering drawings, specifications, and analysis reports for items on the U.S. Munitions List. CMMC Level 2 governs the cybersecurity controls protecting the digital systems where that technical data lives. A Newport News engineering firm working on submarine sensor packages is subject to both at once. Petronella Technology Group scopes engagements to satisfy both regimes with one boundary wherever possible, and to flag the discrete places where ITAR demands controls beyond NIST 800-171.
Personnel and Access
ITAR restricts technical-data access to U.S. persons unless a Department of State export authorization is in place. CMMC Access Control (AC) and Personnel Security (PS) controls reinforce that obligation with role-based access, separation of duties, and screened-personnel evidence. The unified boundary tracks U.S.-person status as a metadata attribute on every CUI-handling user.
Cloud and Foreign-Located Infrastructure
ITAR restricts where technical data can be stored and processed. Microsoft 365 GCC High and Azure Government satisfy both ITAR and the DFARS 252.204-7012 cloud requirements for moderate confidentiality. Commercial Microsoft 365 and commercial Azure are not acceptable for ITAR technical data even when CMMC controls are otherwise present.
Audit and Recordkeeping
ITAR record-keeping obligations run for five years from the date of export or shipment. CMMC Audit and Accountability (AU) controls already drive log retention and review cadence; aligning the retention policy to the longer ITAR window simplifies the recordkeeping program for the combined obligation.
Subcontractor Flow-Down
Both ITAR and DFARS 252.204-7012 require flow-down to any subcontractor at any tier handling the protected data. A unified flow-down clause referencing both regimes simplifies vendor onboarding and removes ambiguity from the prime-flow-down language a Newport News engineering firm sees in HII contract packages.
CMMC Level 2 Readiness for HII Supply-Chain Subs
Most Newport News shipbuilding subcontractors arrive without an existing NIST 800-171 program in place. The path from gap assessment to a clean C3PAO Level 2 assessment typically runs 12 to 18 months. Petronella Technology Group quotes every phase as a fixed-fee statement of work after the free initial assessment so there is no open meter. Every quote is custom-scoped to the specific Newport News environment, the size of the in-scope workforce, and the depth of technical remediation required.
Phase 1: Gap Assessment
From $7,500 for a comprehensive 110-control gap assessment, CUI scoping workshop, and prioritized remediation roadmap. Most Newport News engagements close this phase in 4 to 6 weeks. Deliverables include an SSP outline, a POA&M with owner and milestone assignments, and a SPRS pre-score so leadership knows the exact starting position before any remediation dollars are spent.
Phase 2: Remediation and Documentation
From $35,000 to $150,000 depending on the size of the workforce in scope, the maturity of the existing IT environment, and the depth of technical remediation required. Covers SSP authoring, the full 14-family policy set, procedure documents, MFA rollout, logging and SIEM integration, encryption posture, vulnerability management, and CUI-segmented file and identity infrastructure. Typical Newport News engagements run 4 to 9 months in this phase.
Phase 3: Mock C3PAO Audit
From $12,500 for a full mock assessment that mirrors the C3PAO scoring rubric. Petronella's CMMC-RP practitioners walk every control, score each as Met, Not Met, or Partial against NIST 800-171A assessment objectives, and stand up a remediation sprint for any gaps. Newport News clients typically schedule the mock audit 60 to 90 days before the formal C3PAO engagement.
Phase 4: Ongoing Maintenance
Custom-scoped retainer for continuous control monitoring, evidence refresh, POA&M updates, and annual affirmation support. CMMC certification is triennial, but the practices need to operate continuously. The annual affirmation is signed under criminal penalty for false statements under the False Claims Act, and Petronella Technology Group treats that obligation seriously. Schedule a free Newport News CMMC readiness call to scope your maintenance plan.
Schedule a free CMMC readiness call at /contact-us/ or call (919) 348-4912 to discuss your HII contract timeline and prime-flow-down requirements.
Accelerate the Engagement With ComplianceArmor
ComplianceArmor is the Petronella compliance documentation platform that accelerates every phase of a Newport News CMMC engagement. It is the same toolset our CMMC-RP practitioners use in-house, available to the client team for the artifact production, evidence tracking, and continuous-monitoring work that lives between the formal consulting hours. Think of it as the engineering instrumentation that makes a fixed-fee statement of work predictable rather than open-ended.
What the Platform Delivers
- System Security Plan authoring with 110-control coverage and NIST 800-171A assessment-objective mapping per control.
- POA&M tracking with owner assignment, milestone dates, and evidence-of-closure attachments per finding.
- The full 14-family policy set as editable templates, pre-aligned to the CMMC Level 2 controls a Newport News engineering firm needs.
- SPRS score calculator tied to live evidence so leadership always sees the current score against the maximum 110.
How It Accelerates the Consulting
- Pre-loaded policy and procedure templates compress the SSP-authoring phase by roughly 30 to 40 percent versus a blank-page approach.
- Evidence repository with control-tagging keeps the artifact package C3PAO-ready year-round, not just at assessment time.
- Annual affirmation workflow surfaces stale evidence and drifted controls before the senior official signs under False Claims Act exposure.
- From $497 per month for the platform subscription, paired with the fixed-fee consulting engagement that builds and operates the program around it.
ComplianceArmor is a tool, not a substitute for the consulting work. The Newport News CMMC engagement is still scoped, written, and signed off by a Cyber AB Registered Practitioner. The platform is what makes the practitioner faster and the evidence package easier for your team to maintain after certification. Learn more at our ComplianceArmor practice page or include it in your Newport News engagement scoping call.
What CMMC Level 2 Asks of a Shipbuilding Sub
CMMC Level 2 aligns to the 110 security requirements of NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 2, organized into 14 control families. For Newport News engineering firms and HII supply-chain subs, the highest-friction families tend to be Access Control, Audit and Accountability, System and Communications Protection, and Physical Protection. Petronella Technology Group guides each family with documented artifacts, demonstrated practices, and evidence that will survive C3PAO scrutiny.
Foundation Families
- Access Control (AC): 22 controls governing user authorization, session handling, remote access, and wireless networks.
- Identification and Authentication (IA): 11 controls for multi-factor authentication, password management, and device identity.
- Audit and Accountability (AU): 9 controls for log generation, retention, review, and protection from tampering.
- Configuration Management (CM): 9 controls for baselines, change control, and least-functionality.
- Physical Protection (PE): 6 controls, unusually heavy lift for shipyard suppliers with shop-floor CUI exposure.
Program and Protection Families
- Incident Response (IR): 3 controls, including a tested IR plan and 72-hour DIBNet reporting capability.
- Risk Assessment (RA): 3 controls, including periodic vulnerability scans and remediation cadence.
- System and Communications Protection (SC): 16 controls, including FIPS-validated encryption, boundary defense, and DNS protection.
- System and Information Integrity (SI): 7 controls, including flaw remediation, malicious code protection, and continuous monitoring.
- Media Protection (MP): 9 controls, critical for engineering firms handling printed drawings and removable media.
Why Newport News Engineering Firms Choose Petronella Technology Group
Engineering firms are a priority client profile for Petronella Technology Group. Catlin Engineers and Scientists is a current Petronella engineering-sector client, and the same playbook applies to naval-architecture shops, structural engineering consultancies, electrical-system designers, and the broader engineering supply base that feeds HII's carrier and submarine programs. The combination of an AI-augmented compliance practice and a CMMC-AB Registered Provider Organization position is rare in the Hampton Roads market.
Practitioner Credentials
- Cyber AB Registered Provider Organization (RPO) #1449, verified at cyberab.org.
- Every consultant on the team holds the CMMC Registered Practitioner (CMMC-RP) credential.
- Founder Craig Petronella holds CMMC-RP, CCNA, CWNE, Digital Forensics Examiner #604180, and is MIT-Certified in AI and Blockchain.
- BBB A+ accredited since 2003, founded 2002 as a Raleigh-based managed service and security firm.
- Senior team members Blake Rea, Justin Summers, and Jonathan Wood all hold CMMC-RP credentials.
AI-Augmented Engineering Approach
- Private enterprise AI cluster used in-house for policy generation, evidence tagging, and control mapping - your CUI never leaves the boundary to feed a public model.
- Human Registered Practitioner signs off on every artifact; AI accelerates throughput by roughly 30 to 40 percent on policy and SSP-authoring phases.
- Engineering-firm specialization: our team understands drawing-receiving workflows, ITAR-CUI overlap, and the practical reality of segmenting a CAD environment from commercial productivity.
- Fixed-scope, fixed-fee statements of work after the free assessment. No open meters. Written deliverables your team can edit, not PowerPoint decks.
For more on the engineering-firm angle, see our engineering-firms practice page, which covers the broader AI and cybersecurity offering for the engineering vertical.
Shrinking the CUI Boundary for a Shipyard Sub
The single most consequential decision a Newport News supplier makes is where to draw the CUI boundary. An undisciplined boundary turns the whole company into an assessment scope and inflates audit cost by an order of magnitude. A well-drawn boundary isolates only the team and the systems that actually touch shipbuilding drawings, leaving commercial productivity outside the assessment line.
Enclave Approach
- Dedicated Microsoft 365 GCC High tenant or Azure Government landing zone for the CUI-handling engineering workforce only.
- Virtual desktop infrastructure for the CAD workstations that handle HII drawings, isolating the endpoints outside the boundary from assessment scope.
- Segmented file shares, SharePoint, and Teams sites with conditional-access policies and data-loss prevention rules tuned to ship drawing formats.
- FIPS-validated encryption for drawings at rest and in transit; print controls; removable media controls; and watermarking on every drawing checkout.
What Stays Out of Scope
- General commercial productivity: payroll, HR, marketing, sales CRM, accounting, and commercial customer engagements.
- Guest and contractor networks with no CUI routing, behind their own firewall segment with explicit deny-rules to the CUI enclave.
- Non-CUI engineering data, OEM product literature, commercial CAD libraries, and public marketing content.
- Shop-floor operational technology that does not process contract drawings, when properly segmented from the CUI network with documented physical and logical controls.
A common Newport News engagement pattern: a 200-seat engineering firm with 18 engineers actively working HII drawings ends up with an 18-seat CMMC enclave rather than a 200-seat enterprise certification. That scope reduction typically cuts the annual cost of compliance by roughly two-thirds and shrinks the audit footprint a C3PAO has to walk.
What a Newport News CMMC Engagement Looks Like
Petronella Technology Group is headquartered at 5540 Centerview Dr., Suite 200, Raleigh, NC 27606. Newport News sits roughly 4 hours up I-95 and I-64, a drive the team makes regularly for the onsite phases of every CMMC engagement. We do not maintain a Newport News branch office, and we will never claim otherwise. Most artifact production, policy authoring, evidence collection, and remediation engineering happens remotely through secure-share collaboration. Critical milestones happen onsite in Newport News: CUI boundary walks, facility physical-security inspections, executive briefings, tabletop exercises, and mock C3PAO audits. The travel cadence is built into every fixed-fee statement of work.
Onsite Work in Newport News
- CUI boundary walk-through with facility, IT, and engineering program-management stakeholders in the same room.
- Physical-security control inspection: drawing vaults, media protection, visitor logs, video surveillance, badge access, and shop-floor CUI handling.
- Workforce awareness training delivered onsite for the in-scope engineering team, tuned to HII drawing-handling workflows.
- Incident response tabletop exercises run with the leadership team in person, with shipbuilding-relevant scenarios.
- Mock C3PAO audits performed onsite to mirror the real assessment environment your team will face.
Remote Work from Raleigh HQ
- SSP, POA&M, and 14-family policy authoring with weekly review cadence over secure conferencing.
- Microsoft 365 GCC High and Azure Government landing-zone build, executed remotely with admin access through approved channels.
- Evidence collection and artifact tagging into a shared, access-controlled repository, organized to NIST 800-171A assessment objectives.
- Daily standup channel access for the Newport News program team during active remediation phases, with engineer-to-engineer dialog.
- SPRS score calculation, scoring rubric documentation, and coaching the designated official through the actual submission.
A Newport News Sub's 9-Month Path to Certification
Most Newport News engineering firms come to Petronella Technology Group after an HII prime asks for proof of CMMC readiness by a specific contract date. Here is the sequence we run, compressed to fit a typical 9-month award timeline.
CUI scoping workshop, drawing-handling inventory, and asset enumeration
110-control gap assessment with evidence collection plan and SPRS pre-score
SSP v1.0 and POA&M authoring aligned to NIST 800-171A objectives
Technical remediation: GCC High, MFA, logging, FIPS encryption, segmentation
Policy rollout, workforce training, drawing-handling tabletop exercises
SPRS score submission and onsite mock C3PAO audit in Newport News
Remediation of mock findings, evidence package sign-off, prime notification
Formal C3PAO assessment, issue resolution, certification award
Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 for Newport News Subs
Petronella Technology Group consults across all CMMC levels. Level 1 covers the 17 practices for Federal Contract Information handlers with annual self-assessment. Level 2 is the 110-control NIST 800-171 baseline for CUI handlers with triennial C3PAO certification. Level 3 adds 24 enhanced controls from NIST SP 800-172 for contractors supporting DoD's most sensitive programs - relevant for some Newport News subs working on advanced submarine or carrier sub-systems.
Level 1 (17 practices)
For contractors handling only Federal Contract Information. Annual self-assessment with SPRS submission. Good fit for smaller Newport News suppliers with limited DoD CUI exposure - typically commercial-product suppliers selling commodity items to HII without drawing-receipt.
Level 2 (110 controls)
For contractors handling CUI. Triennial C3PAO certification with SSP, POA&M, and the full NIST 800-171 body of evidence. The default path for most Newport News engineering firms, naval-architecture shops, structural consultancies, and HII tier-one and tier-two suppliers.
Level 3 (134 controls)
For contractors supporting DoD's Advanced Persistent Threat defense. Adds 24 enhanced controls from NIST SP 800-172, including organization-wide threat hunting, supply-chain risk management, and defense-in-depth architecture. Selectively required on the most sensitive carrier and submarine sub-systems.
Not Sure Which Level?
The contract specifies it. If you are not sure, Petronella Technology Group reads the solicitation with you during the free initial assessment and maps it to the exact level and scope you must carry. HII prime-flow-downs are usually explicit about the requirement.
The Hampton Roads Defense Ecosystem Around Newport News
Newport News does not stand alone. The surrounding Hampton Roads cluster includes some of the densest concentrations of federal aerospace, defense, and research activity in the country. Each adjacent installation pulls a different shape of CUI into the local supplier base, and the same Newport News engineering firms often serve two or three of these customers simultaneously.
NASA Langley Research Center
Located in nearby Hampton, NASA Langley is one of NASA's oldest field centers and partners with HII and the broader Hampton Roads supplier base on aerospace research, hypersonics, and atmospheric flight. Engineering firms with NASA Langley contracts often inherit federal contract obligations that align closely with CMMC scoping.
Joint Base Langley-Eustis
Joint Base Langley-Eustis hosts the U.S. Air Force's Air Combat Command headquarters and the U.S. Army's Transportation Center. Newport News and Hampton suppliers providing logistics software, engineering analysis, and IT services to JBLE units operate inside the same CUI regulatory framework as HII subs.
Newport News Nuclear
Newport News Nuclear, an HII subsidiary, focuses on commercial nuclear services. Its workstreams cross into federal contracts on a regular basis, and the dual-use posture demands clean CMMC scoping decisions about which information flows are CUI and which are commercial nuclear technical data.
Adjacent Norfolk Naval Base
Norfolk Naval Base sits just across Hampton Roads from Newport News and is the largest naval base in the world. Suppliers serving both NNS shipbuilding and Norfolk-based fleet maintenance contracts operate inside the same CMMC framework, often with overlapping prime-flow-down requirements that need careful unified scoping.
Serving the Newport News Metro and Hampton Roads
From the Newport News Shipbuilding waterfront through Hampton, Williamsburg, Yorktown, and across the harbor into Norfolk and Virginia Beach, our CMMC engagements cover the full Hampton Roads footprint where defense, aerospace, and shipbuilding cluster.
The Documentation Your Newport News Assessor Will Ask For
CMMC assessment is a documentation exercise before it is a technical one. Every control needs a policy that references the control, a procedure that implements the policy, and an artifact that proves the procedure runs. Petronella Technology Group builds and maintains the full body of evidence so your C3PAO never has to guess.
System Security Plan (SSP)
The SSP describes the system boundary, the 110 controls, and how each is implemented. It references other documents rather than duplicating them. Our SSPs read like engineering drawings, not marketing brochures, and they are written for the engineering audience that your C3PAO will assign.
Plan of Action and Milestones (POA&M)
Every control with a gap gets a POA&M entry with owner, milestone date, and remediation description. The POA&M is a living artifact, reviewed monthly, closed when evidence proves the control is operating.
14-Family Policy Set
Access control, awareness and training, audit and accountability, configuration management, identification and authentication, incident response, maintenance, media protection, personnel security, physical protection, risk assessment, security assessment, system and communications protection, and system and information integrity. Fourteen policies, one per control family.
Procedure Documents
Each policy references one or more procedures. Procedures describe the actual steps your engineering team follows: how to check out a drawing, how to enroll in MFA, how to review audit logs, how to handle an incident, how to onboard and offboard users.
Artifact Repository
Screenshots, log excerpts, configuration exports, training records, phishing simulation reports, vulnerability scan reports, patch compliance reports, access reviews, change-management approvals. Each artifact tagged to the control it evidences.
SPRS Submission
Supplier Performance Risk System score submission with cryptographic validation. The score ranges from minus 203 to positive 110. A fully implemented 800-171 environment scores 110. Every missing or partial control costs points against the maximum.
Full Cybersecurity Coverage for Hampton Roads Subs
CMMC is part of a broader cybersecurity program. Once the certification is secured, most Newport News engineering firms want the same team running ongoing security operations so the controls stay operational year-round.
Cybersecurity Services
Managed detection and response, security operations center services, and continuous monitoring tuned to the CMMC controls your HII prime flows down.
CMMC Practice Overview
The broader CMMC practice page covers all three levels, assessment methodology, and the Petronella Technology Group delivery model end to end.
Engineering Firms Practice
The engineering-firms vertical page covers our priority industry focus, including drawing-handling controls and CAD-environment segmentation patterns relevant to HII supply-chain work.
CMMC Compliance Flagship
The flagship CMMC compliance pillar with the full DFARS, NIST 800-171, and C3PAO assessment context for North Carolina and Virginia defense contractors.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Petronella work with HII tier-2 and tier-3 supply-chain subs?
Yes. The CUI flow-down obligation under DFARS 252.204-7012 does not stop at tier one - any subcontractor at any tier that processes, stores, or transmits Covered Defense Information is in scope for CMMC Level 2. Petronella Technology Group has scoped CMMC engagements for tier-one, tier-two, and tier-three engineering firms across the Defense Industrial Base. The technical reality of being a smaller tier-two or tier-three sub usually means a tighter CUI boundary and a smaller enclave footprint, which Petronella prices accordingly.
How does CMMC interact with ITAR for shipbuilding controls?
For Newport News engineering firms, ITAR and CUI frequently sit on the same document. A controlled drawing for a submarine sensor system is both ITAR-controlled technical data and CUI under the broader Covered Defense Information umbrella. The CMMC Level 2 controls are not a substitute for ITAR compliance - they are an overlay that protects the digital systems where ITAR technical data live. Petronella Technology Group scopes the boundary so the same controls satisfy both regimes wherever possible, and we flag the places where ITAR requires additional controls beyond NIST 800-171.
Can engineering drawings be remediated under CMMC L2 once they have been mishandled?
Drawings that have been transmitted or stored outside the protected boundary are an incident, not a remediation. DFARS 252.204-7012 requires reporting any cyber incident affecting Covered Defense Information to DoD via DIBNet within 72 hours of discovery, and the affected systems must be preserved for forensic review. Petronella Technology Group's Digital Forensics Examiner credential (DFE #604180) puts our team in a position to support that response, but the path forward is incident reporting first, then control remediation and a re-scoped boundary to prevent recurrence.
Are you a C3PAO, or do you prepare us for one?
Petronella Technology Group is a Cyber AB Registered Provider Organization (RPO) #1449. RPOs prepare clients for CMMC assessment, author the SSP and POA&M, run mock audits, and stand behind the body of evidence. A C3PAO is a separate, independent organization that performs the formal certification assessment. By design, the same firm cannot both build and certify - that is what assessment independence means. Petronella refers clients to a C3PAO when they are ready, and the relationship is arms-length.
What does CMMC compliance cost a Newport News shipbuilding sub?
From $7,500 for the gap assessment, from $35,000 to $150,000 for remediation depending on workforce size and the depth of CUI infrastructure work, from $12,500 for a mock C3PAO audit, and a custom-scoped retainer for ongoing maintenance and annual affirmation support. Every Newport News engagement is custom-scoped after the free initial assessment. There are no fixed catalog prices because no two CUI environments look the same, and engineering-firm shop floors vary widely in how drawings are handled today.
How long does CMMC certification take from gap to award for an HII supplier?
Typical timeline is 12 to 18 months total: 4 to 6 weeks for the gap assessment, 4 to 9 months for remediation and SSP authoring, 1 to 2 months for the mock C3PAO audit and final fixes, then the formal C3PAO engagement itself. Engineering firms that already operate a mature ITAR program can compress that to 6 to 9 months because much of the physical-protection and personnel-security work is already in place. Petronella's AI-accelerated policy and evidence tooling reduces the SSP-authoring phase by roughly 30 to 40 percent compared to a manual approach.
Do you serve Newport News onsite or remote?
Both. Petronella Technology Group runs a hybrid engagement model from our Raleigh headquarters. Documentation, SSP authoring, technical remediation, and evidence collection happen remotely. CUI boundary walks, physical-security inspections, workforce training, tabletop exercises, and onsite mock C3PAO audits happen in Newport News. The 4-hour drive from Raleigh is built into every fixed-fee statement of work, and the travel cadence is set during the initial scoping.
Is your team CMMC certified?
Yes. Petronella Technology Group is a Cyber AB Registered Provider Organization, RPO #1449, verified on the public Cyber AB marketplace. Every consultant on the team holds the CMMC Registered Practitioner (CMMC-RP) credential. Founder Craig Petronella holds CMMC-RP, CCNA, CWNE, Digital Forensics Examiner #604180, and is MIT-Certified in AI and Blockchain. Senior team members Blake Rea, Justin Summers, and Jonathan Wood all hold CMMC-RP credentials.
Do you support CMMC Level 3 for advanced submarine or carrier sub-systems?
Yes. Level 3 adds 24 enhanced practices from NIST SP 800-172 on top of the 110 Level 2 controls. The enhanced practices target advanced-persistent-threat resilience and include organization-wide threat hunting, supply-chain risk management, and defense-in-depth architecture. For Newport News subs working on the most sensitive carrier or submarine sub-systems, Level 3 may be the contract-required level. Petronella Technology Group consults on all three CMMC levels (Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3) - see our CMMC practice overview for the full delivery model.
Can you help with the SPRS score submission for HII contracts?
Yes. Every Newport News engagement includes calculation of your Supplier Performance Risk System score against the 110 NIST 800-171 practices, using the scoring rubric DoD publishes. We coach your designated official through the SPRS submission and provide the underlying evidence package that supports each scored control. Many HII prime-flow-downs require an SPRS posting in advance of contract award, and we sequence the work so the SPRS submission lines up with your contract timeline.
Start Your Newport News CMMC Journey
Schedule a free CMMC readiness assessment for your Newport News engineering firm or HII supply-chain sub. Our CMMC-RP certified team guides you from gap analysis to certification, with the engineering-firm focus that the carrier and submarine programs demand.