CMMC Did Not Go Away: Engineering Firm Launches 30-Day Compliant Enclave Builds at Fixed Price

Reliable Integration LLC has launched a fixed-price service that builds Microsoft GCC High and Azure Government enclaves for small defense contractors in 30 days, publishing its $45,000 price openly at a time when most CMMC vendors quote only after a discovery call.

FARGO, N.D. - 26 August 2026 - Reliable Integration LLC today launched Compliant Enclave in 30 Days, a fixed-price engineering service that builds Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) enclaves for small and mid-size United States defense contractors preparing for CMMC Level 2 and NIST SP 800-171. The service costs $45,000, takes 30 days, and the price is published on the company's website rather than quoted privately.

The launch follows a period of widespread confusion in the defense industrial base. On 13 July 2026, the Department of Defense suspended Phases 2 and 3 of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program pending a review, pausing the planned expansion of third-party assessments. Many suppliers read that news as a reprieve.

It was not. CMMC Phase 1 has been in force since 10 November 2025. Covered new DoD contracts still require a current Level 1 or Level 2 self-assessment posted in the Supplier Performance Risk System, plus an annual affirmation, to be eligible for award. Prime contractors have continued flowing requirements to their suppliers on their own schedules, several of them earlier than the government's.

"The suspension paused the auditor. It did not pause the controls," said Arday Ardayfio, Principal Engineer at Reliable Integration. "A self-assessment still requires that the controls genuinely exist, and the affirmation is a representation to the federal government. DoD has already pursued False Claims Act cases over misrepresented 800-171 compliance. A low honest score is a far better position than a high false one."

The service centers on enclave scoping - fencing CUI into a defined environment so that only that environment falls inside the assessment boundary, rather than bringing an entire company into scope. In a 40-person manufacturer where six people handle controlled technical data, the difference determines both the initial cost and every future assessment.

Deliverables include a GCC High or Azure Government tenant, identity and conditional access design, network segmentation, encryption, centralized logging, a CUI data-flow map, a System Security Plan covering all 110 NIST SP 800-171 requirements, and a Plan of Action and Milestones. A standalone assessment and gap analysis is available at $7,500 and is credited in full toward a build. Ongoing monitoring and SPRS maintenance is $2,000 per month with no term commitment.

The company also publishes free guidance on its site covering how to read a prime contractor's flow-down letter, whether GCC High is actually required, and what a Level 2 self-assessment involves.

"Most CMMC vendors are compliance-paperwork shops that subcontract the engineering," Ardayfio said. "And if a firm will not tell you the price before a discovery call, the price depends on what they think you will pay. We published ours."

Ardayfio previously served as a Senior Cloud Solutions Architect and Azure Network Support Engineer at Microsoft, and as a Senior Azure Infrastructure Operations Network and Security Engineer at Fiserv Government Solutions, where he worked on migrating United States Treasury financial systems into Azure Government. He holds the AZ-700, AZ-305, AZ-104 and SC-500 certifications and an MBA from the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School.

Reliable Integration LLC is not a CMMC Third-Party Assessment Organization (C3PAO), is not a Registered Provider Organization, and does not issue CMMC certifications. The company builds and documents the environment that an authorized assessor later evaluates.

The service is available now to defense contractors across the United States and is delivered remotely. More information, including full pricing, is at https://reliablei.com/

Arday Ardayfio, MBA Principal Engineer
Reliable Integration LLC
Fargo, North Dakota, United States
Phone: 1-919-717-2707
Email: hello@reliablei.com
Web: https://reliablei.com

Reliable Integration LLC is a cloud security engineering firm based in Fargo, North Dakota, serving the United States defense industrial base. The company designs and builds compliant Microsoft GCC High and Azure Government enclaves for small and mid-size defense contractors working toward CMMC Level 2 and NIST SP 800-171, and operates a value-added reseller arm supplying servers, endpoints and network hardware. Reliable Integration LLC carries general liability and errors and omissions coverage.

This release was published on openPR.