Defense Industrial Base · Planning benchmarks
DIB CTO Dashboard
Benchmark where your organization sits relative to researched industry standards — what technology, security and compliance actually cost at your size, who does the work, and what it costs to leave the gaps open. Move the two sliders; everything else recalculates. Sources are listed at the bottom.
Set your size
Your annual technology envelope
Infrastructure, network, software, devices, security, compliance and the people who run them, in one number.
The $180K lens
Every function below is real work that has to happen somewhere. A fully loaded specialist of any kind costs about $180,000 a year — so the only question is how many fractions of a person each function needs, and whether you buy them whole or share them.
IT generalists / helpdesk & sysadmin
- In-house
- $990K
- MSP full-stack @ $175/user/mo
- $462K
Network & security engineering
- In-house
- $396K
- Project-based specialists + MSP
- $218K
Security monitoring, 24/7
- In-house
- $900K
- MDR @ $16/user/mo
- $42K
Compliance / CMMC lead
- In-house
- $158K
- Fractional lead + assessor partners
- $138K
Security leadership (CISO)
- In-house
- $45K
- vCISO / fractional leadership
- $78K
Program / project management
- In-house
- $79K
- External or fractional PM
- $51K
Strategy & architecture
- In-house
- $45K
- Advisory / fractional architect
- $25K
9.52 FTE plus a 5-person monitoring team
41% below all-in-house at your size
The coverage map at 220 people
Move the sliders and watch functions cross the lineMap total reconciles with the blended column above.
$1.5MThe question is never whether to use outside help. It is which functions belong inside your walls at your size, and which you share.
The AI-leveraged model
The same work, weighted toward tooling instead of people. Deflection is real but bounded — routine volume moves, judgment and accountability do not. The cost is front-loaded into build and platform, and that is the line that commoditizes fastest.
You’re on the traditional model. Switch the operating model above to AI-assisted or AI-native to see what pushing the envelope does to headcount, cost and risk at your size.
Anything can be done in-house
Every solution, in-house or not, passes through the same four layers — the only question is who you pay and how visibly.
Strategy & scoping
Evaluation, analysis, right-sizing, architecture, vendor selection.
Implementation
Standing it up, migration, cutover, the parallel running nobody plans for.
Management
Patching, monitoring, licensing, documentation — keeping it healthy.
Escalation & incident
When it breaks at 2am: retained capacity, or emergency rates.
Skipping a layer doesn’t delete its cost. It converts it into risk.
What it costs to not spend it
Nothing here is a prediction. It is the arithmetic of the gaps that are currently open, priced the same way the spending is.
If the gaps stay open
- No 24/7 detection — 21-day median outage$2.1M
- Defense revenue exposed to CMMC flow-down$36M
- Breach exposure at your size$1.4M
- Governance / False Claims Act exposure$507K
- Key-person concentration$180K
What closing them costs
- MDR / 24-7 monitoring, first year$42K
- CMMC readiness & remediation$110K
- C3PAO assessment$70K
- Annual sustainment$43K
- Blended team to run all of it$1.5M
The calendar, not the invoice
Months from todayThe red line is the point a prime flows the requirement down to you. The work takes 12–18 months whenever it starts, so delay doesn’t reduce the cost — it consumes the runway.
Your reality check
A $60M defense manufacturer with 220 employees should be investing roughly $1.8M–$3.6M a year across everything technology — infrastructure, network, software, devices, security and compliance — staffed by the equivalent of 9.52 specialists plus round-the-clock monitoring. Done fully in-house that team costs $2.6M; blended with managed services, $1.5M. The four layers of any solution at this size total $2.8M in a transformation year. Leaving the gaps open puts $36M of contract revenue and roughly $2.1M of downtime exposure on the table — and the calendar, not the invoice, is the part you can’t buy back.
If your spend sits below this band, it is almost never carelessness. It is a budget that was right at the last size you were. The work of the next year is repricing technology for the company you have actually become.
References & research base
Every benchmark on this page is anchored to published industry research, federal rulemaking or public rate data. Expand a category to see the specific sources behind it. Figures are blended midpoints, not quotes — your contracts, geography and estate will move them.
Planning benchmarks for the Defense Industrial Base. Not a quote — every figure is a planning range, not a proposal.