Catalog · 34 articles
The full run
Every MacZine article, week by week, newest first - written, reviewed and versioned in the open.
Week of Aug 31–Sep 4
Platform Spotlight · AI & Automation
IBE Decides an AI Agent's Authority Before It Acts
IBE governs what an AI agent may do with no LLM in the decision path - a deterministic autonomy gate that certifies or refuses every action, in writing.
Field Report · CUI Scope
CUI Sprawl Is the Scope Creep Nobody Diagrams
A correctly scoped CUI enclave still leaks through tickets, meeting transcripts, and test copies. NIST 800-171 3.1.3 closes it - stricter marking can't.
Explainer · CUI Basics
What Actually Makes a File CUI
CUI is a government designation, not a judgment you make on a file's contents. How marking, derivative marking, and decontrol actually work.
Buyer's Guide · Capture
Read the Solicitation's Compliance Clauses Before You Bid
Compliance cost gets decided at bid or no-bid, not after award. A front-to-back read of the clauses, DD-254, and Section L/M that actually price it.
Week of Aug 24–Aug 28
Field Report · Remote Work
Home Office CUI Scope Starts at the Kitchen Table
NIST 800-171 physical protection assumes an office, not a house. Keep CUI off the remote endpoint and most of the control problem disappears.
Field Report · Configuration Management
STIG, CIS, or Your Own Build: What Counts as a Baseline
A DISA STIG, a CIS Benchmark, or your own build standard satisfies NIST 800-171 3.4.1 - if it's applied, evidenced, and watched for drift.
Explainer · Quality and Compliance
Your AS9100 QMS Already Runs Half of CMMC
Document control, CAPA, internal audit, and management review already run most of CMMC's governance half. The mapping, and the three gaps that remain.
Buyer's Guide · Cloud and ESPs
GCC High or Not: The External Service Provider Decision
32 CFR 170.19 and DFARS 7012 pull your cloud and your MSP into assessment scope. What decides GCC High versus an enclave, and the matrix to demand first.
Field Report · Access Control
3.5.3: The MFA Control Most Programs Think They Already Passed
NIST 800-171 3.5.3 requires MFA for three scopes, not one. Most programs cover network logins and miss privileged local access - the one assessors test first.
Week of Aug 17–Aug 21
Buyer's Guide · Cost and Pricing
Who Pays for CMMC? It Depends Where You Book It
FAR Part 31 makes most CMMC spending allowable. Whether you ever see the money again depends on booking it direct or indirect - a call made once, by accident.
Explainer · POA&M
What You Can Put on a POA&M, and What You Cannot
Under 32 CFR 170.21 a CMMC POA&M can carry only 1-point requirements, minus six named exclusions, and must close within 180 days. The rules.
Field Report · AI and CUI
Can You Put CUI in an AI Tool? Read the Cloud Clause First
The DFARS clause that governs cloud service providers already answers whether CUI can go into an AI tool - most of the commercial tier fails it.
Governance · CMMC Documentation
How Many Documents Does CMMC Level 2 Actually Require?
NIST 800-171 names 110 requirements but no document count. Scoping a CMMC Level 2 documentation set is a governance decision - here is what the 110 imply.
From the record · Patents pending
MacTech Files Three Provisional Patents Built on Proof, Not Trust
Three provisional patents from MacTech - Trust Codex, IBE, Freehold - on tested systems that prove their claims instead of asking you to trust the operator.
Week of Aug 10–Aug 14
From the field · RMF / ATO
A C3PAO Validates the Evidence Problem Behind Vault-Codex
A CMMC assessor's letter of support confirms the documentation and evidence-management problem is real - and where MacTech Vault-Codex fits.
Explainer · Workforce
Your Training Records Are Compliance Evidence. Are They?
Three CMMC controls turn security awareness training into an evidence problem. Most organizations do the training and fail the control anyway.
Platform Spotlight · Enclave Monitoring
EnclaveWatch: Monitoring a CUI Vault Without Draining It
Continuous monitoring usually means shipping logs somewhere central. Inside a CUI boundary that is the one thing you should not do. EnclaveWatch inverts it.
Platform Spotlight · Capture
CaptureOS: Finding the Work You Are Still Eligible For
Capture tools tell you what is available. Compliance tools tell you what you can hold. CaptureOS puts both in one system, because the answer moves together.
Field Report · Cryptography
FIPS 140-3 Is the Control That Fails Quietly
Encryption that is strong is not the same as encryption that is validated. The distinction costs 5 SPRS points and it is invisible until an assessor looks.
Week of Aug 3–Aug 7
Explainer · Self-Attestation
Who Signs Your Self-Attestation, and What They Are Signing
Self-attestation is not a lighter version of an assessment. It moves the assessment risk onto a named individual - and the False Claims Act is where that lands.
Explainer · RMF and ATO
RMF and CMMC Are Not the Same Program. Run Them as One.
RMF authorizes a system, CMMC certifies a contractor. They ask overlapping questions in different vocabularies - and paying twice is the mistake.
Field Report · Incident Response
The 72-Hour Clock in DFARS 252.204-7012, Hour by Hour
DFARS 7012 gives you 72 hours to report a cyber incident to DoD. Walking the clock hour by hour shows where contractors actually lose the time.
Buyer's Guide · CUI Handling
Enclave or Whole Network? The Scoping Decision, Priced
Scoping CMMC Level 2 to a CUI enclave or to your whole network is a cost decision disguised as an architecture decision. Here is how the two actually compare.
Field Report · CMMC Level 2
The System Security Plan an Assessor Actually Reads
Most SSPs are written to be filed, not read. Here is how a C3PAO assessor moves through the document, and what they are checking at each stop.
Week of Jul 27–Jul 31
Explainer · CMMC Levels
The CMMC Levels Are Not a Ladder, and Only One Requires a Pen Test
Level 1, 2, and 3 test different things on different clocks. Only one requires a penetration test - here is which, and why the other two do not.
Explainer · NIST 800-171
How Your SPRS Score Is Actually Calculated
The DoD Assessment Methodology scores 110 controls on a 5/3/1 weighting and bottoms out at -203. Here is the arithmetic, and how a CO reads it.
Maxine's Pick · Subcontracting
DoD Paused CMMC Phase 2. Your Subcontract Flow-Down Didn't.
DoD suspended CMMC Phase 2's federal clause, but a prime's subcontract requirement is a separate instrument - and it doesn't lift itself.
Vision · Infrastructure, AI & Trust
Building the Trusted Future: Infrastructure, AI, and MacTech
How MacTech combines infrastructure, security, quality, and governance into systems a defense contractor can trust - and where AI is allowed to decide.
From the field · CMMC
CMMC Phase 2 Is Paused. Your Compliance Clock Isn't.
DoD paused CMMC Phase 2 certification to review the program - the DFARS and NIST 800-171 obligations under it did not. What to do during the review.
Platform Spotlight · AI & Automation
MacTech Suite: Running Twenty Platforms Without Twenty Teams
Inside the MacTech Suite: the internal command center that fixes deploys, fixes UI bugs, and now commissions MacZine - every action gated and logged.
Week of Jul 20–Jul 24
Field Report · Secure Communications
Freehold: Secure Comms You Hold Outright
Peer-to-peer encrypted chat, calls and 2 GB file transfer for small DIB teams - post-quantum, air-gap ready, 800-171 evidence built in. Free, open source.
cmmc
The First 90 Days of a CMMC Level 2 Program
A practitioner's sequence for the first 90 days of CMMC Level 2: scope the CUI boundary, baseline against NIST 800-171, and start evidence discipline early.
announcements
Welcome to MacZine
MacZine is the MacTech Solutions newsletter - practitioner-grade articles on CMMC, NIST 800-171, RMF, and defense industrial base compliance.
Suggest a topic
Working through a CMMC, NIST 800-171, or RMF problem we haven’t covered? Tell us what you’re stuck on - it goes straight into the queue.