
CMMC Plain and Simple
John Taggart(Author)
John W Taggart (Publisher)
Published on 7. April 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
240 pages
979-8-9952298-1-0 (ISBN)
Description
CMMC is no longer coming. It's here. And for the tens of thousands of defense contractors who handle sensitive government information, it's now a condition of contract award.
But most of the people whose decisions determine whether a company passes or fails a CMMC assessment - executives, program managers, contracts officers, HR directors, finance leads - don't have a cybersecurity background. They've been handed a compliance obligation written in regulatory language, told it matters enormously, and left to figure out what to actually do about it.
CMMC Plain and Simple was written for them.
In plain English, with no assumed technical background, this book explains what CMMC is and why it exists, what the three certification levels require and who needs which, what the 110 security controls are actually asking for, how the assessment process works from first contact to certificate, what the False Claims Act exposure looks like when compliance is misrepresented - including the criminal indictment that put twenty years in prison on the table - and what's coming as the program matures through full implementation in 2028.
Every chapter covers what the requirement is, why it matters, and what failure looks like in real organizations. Every function in a defense contractor - not just IT - gets specific guidance on its role.
Written by a Certified CMMC Assessor with direct experience in the assessment ecosystem, this is the book that explains CMMC to everyone who needs to understand it, not just the people who implement it.
If your organization holds DoD contracts, this book is not optional reading. Neither is the program it explains.
More details
Language
English
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
396 gr
ISBN-13
979-8-9952298-1-0 (9798995229810)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
J. Taggart is a Certified CMMC Assessor and government cloud security and compliance engineer with extensive experience in the defense industrial base. His work spans CMMC Level 2 compliance, NIST SP 800-171, DFARS, and the full Microsoft 365 ecosystem as it applies to defense contractors navigating federal cybersecurity requirements.
He has advised organizations across the defense supply chain on compliance program development, System Security Plan documentation, scoping, and assessment readiness - and has built firsthand familiarity with the gaps that produce findings and the organizational decisions that create them.
CMMC Plain and Simple is his first nonfiction title. He lives on the Gulf Coast of Texas.