BASTION exists because small government contractors keep getting told to "be CMMC compliant" — and then left to figure it out with no budget and no plain-English guide. This is the guide.
I'm a U.S. military veteran and a working cybersecurity professional. My day-to-day is helping small government contractors — the two-person shops and family businesses that hold DoD contracts — actually secure their networks and meet NIST 800-171 and CMMC 2.0 without hiring an enterprise security team they can't afford.
I write here under a pen name for the same reason I lock down my own systems: privacy is the job. The credentials that matter for you are the ones on the work — veteran, practitioner, and someone who has sat on both sides of a small-business assessment.
Big review sites ignore this audience because the traffic is small and the topic is hard. So contractors end up buying the wrong gear, over-paying consultants, or — worst — failing an assessment and losing the contract. BASTION is the shortcut: the specific tools, hardware, and done-for-you compliance resources I'd put in place myself, mapped to the controls an assessor actually grades.
The honest part. BASTION is reader-supported — I earn a commission on some purchases and sign-ups, at no extra cost to you (full disclosure here). And this is practical guidance from a practitioner, not legal or accredited-assessor advice — your C3PAO makes the final compliance call.
Questions, corrections, or a tool I should test? Reach me at ray@bastion.example.