Michelle Hofmaster is chief information security officer at Arcfield, where she leads enterprise cybersecurity strategy and risk management across the company’s defense and intelligence missions. Since joining Arcfield following two strategic acquisitions, she has transformed the security program into a true business enabler — building partnerships across sectors and championing a “work together to get to yes” approach to cyber resilience.
Cybersecurity in the defense industrial base is no longer a solo mission. Every contractor, integrator and agency now operates on the same digital front line, where one weak link can compromise the mission for all. The Department of Defense’s final CMMC 2.0 rule, taking effect November 10, makes that reality official. It shifts the focus from compliance to collective defense, recognizing that resilience depends on how effectively government and industry share intelligence and build trust.
CMMC 2.0 may set the technical standard, but collaboration defines its success. It asks contractors to prove they can not only protect data but also detect, report and respond to threats in concert with peers, primes and federal partners. The model simplifies previous requirements and aligns directly with NIST SP 800-171, creating a more unified path toward readiness. The deeper shift is cultural. It prioritizes transparency and partnership as essential parts of cybersecurity maturity.
From Compliance to Collaboration
Threat intelligence sharing now sits at the heart of this new framework. In the past, contractors often operated in silos, waiting for formal advisories that might arrive too late to be actionable. Today, alerts can move across the defense ecosystem in minutes through secure communication channels, industry working groups and in direct coordination with federal agencies. Each exchange strengthens the collective defense posture of the entire industrial base. When one contractor detects a suspicious pattern, the information can protect many others.
Agencies like CISA and NSA have made major progress in uniting public and private sectors through joint advisories that deliver unclassified, actionable intelligence. These efforts extend the benefits of early awareness to smaller and mid-sized companies that may not have the same in-house resources as large primes. At Arcfield, we have seen firsthand how this kind of collaboration improves speed, confidence and accuracy in incident response. When information flows freely between agencies and integrators, it raises the baseline for everyone.
Strengthening Defense Through Partnership
CMMC 2.0 emphasizes a collaborative security approach that relies on continuous validation, appropriate access controls, and proper network segmentation. These principles are most effective when organizations work together, sharing threat data and contextual insights. In practice, robust cybersecurity defense is a collaborative effort and organizations make better real-time decisions when they share visibility and trust one another’s insights. This collaborative model is especially valuable for smaller contractors. Many worry that compliance costs or limited staff size may put them at a disadvantage. Yet through public-private coordination, these organizations now have access to training, unclassified data sets and federal guidance that help close capability gaps. Government agencies have recognized that a single weak link can compromise a mission. By extending support to all suppliers, they ensure that collective security does not depend on company size or contract value.
Looking Ahead
Cybersecurity is no longer about who has the best technology. It is about who can act on the best information and how quickly that information moves across the defense ecosystem. The ability to analyze, share and respond to threat data is now a core part of compliance under CMMC 2.0, but its true impact lies in what happens next.
Information sharing must remain the foundation of national defense. It depends on policies that reward transparency and protect those who participate. Renewing federal information-sharing protections will be essential to keeping that trust strong. CMMC 2.0 sets the floor, not the ceiling. By prioritizing transparency and fortifying the weakest links, the defense industrial base can move beyond checking compliance boxes to achieve true resilience.
October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. WashingtonExec is sharing OpEds from industry experts on critical cyber topics, and how GovCons and government can work together to secure critical missions.