CMMC Assessment Pause Leaves Defense Contractors Facing a New Risk

The CMMC Phase II assessment pause exposes governance gaps in how Defense Industrial Base contractors manage Controlled Unclassified Information—particularly where AI agents, automated pipelines, and agentic workflows access and process data. The piece warns that self-attestation without independent verification increases exposure to DOJ Civil Cyber-Fraud enforcement and recommends a 60-day action plan: map every human and agent identity, build continuous evidence-generation infrastructure, and extend unified policy enforcement across all identities to create defensible, continuous compliance.