The Core Distinction
RegScale and PolicyCortex both help defense contractors with compliance automation, but they automate fundamentally different things.
RegScale automates compliance documentation — creating, organizing, and maintaining the policy documents, SSPs, POA&Ms, and audit artifacts that compliance frameworks require. It digitizes the paper-based GRC workflow.
PolicyCortex automates compliance enforcement — continuously monitoring your cloud environment against compliance controls, detecting drift, and remediating gaps autonomously.
Both matter for CMMC. But if you have to choose where to invest automation first, enforcement is where breaches happen and where assessment failures occur.
What RegScale Does
RegScale is a modern GRC platform designed to replace legacy tools like XACTA and eMASS for federal compliance workflows. Its capabilities include:
- Digital System Security Plans (SSPs) with auto-population
- POA&M management and tracking
- ATO package development and management
- Inheritance mapping for cloud service provider controls
- Integration with compliance evidence sources
- Workflow automation for compliance reviews
For DoD contractors and federal agencies managing complex ATO processes, RegScale provides genuine value in streamlining documentation workflows.
Where RegScale Leaves Gaps
Documentation ≠ Enforcement
RegScale helps you document that you have encryption policies. It doesn't verify that your S3 buckets are actually encrypted, doesn't detect when encryption is disabled, and doesn't re-enable it when it drifts.
CMMC assessors will examine actual system configurations, not just documentation. A well-written SSP in RegScale doesn't protect you from an assessment finding on a misconfigured cloud environment.
No Real-Time Cloud Integration
RegScale integrates with cloud environments primarily for evidence collection and inheritance mapping. It doesn't continuously evaluate cloud configurations against control requirements in real time.
The gap between your documented compliance posture (in RegScale) and your actual compliance posture (in your cloud environment) is where compliance failures occur.
No Autonomous Remediation
Like all documentation-focused GRC tools, RegScale doesn't remediate compliance gaps. It tracks them in POA&Ms and provides workflow tools for human-driven remediation.
PolicyCortex Comparison
| Capability | PolicyCortex | RegScale |
|---|---|---|
| Continuous cloud monitoring | ✓ | ✗ |
| Autonomous remediation | ✓ | ✗ |
| Real-time CMMC compliance scoring | ✓ | ✗ |
| SSP / documentation management | Roadmap | ✓ |
| POA&M management | ✓ | ✓ |
| ATO package support | Integration | ✓ (primary feature) |
| Continuous evidence collection | ✓ | ✗ |
| Cloud API write access | ✓ | ✗ |
| Defense framework depth (CMMC, NIST) | ✓ | ✓ |
How They Work Together
PolicyCortex and RegScale aren't necessarily either/or. Organizations running RegScale for documentation can use PolicyCortex for enforcement:
- PolicyCortex continuously monitors and remediates cloud controls, generating evidence
- RegScale ingests that evidence for SSP documentation and ATO package development
- PolicyCortex feeds real-time compliance posture into RegScale's risk register
This integration model provides both the documentation automation (RegScale) and the enforcement automation (PolicyCortex) that CMMC requires.
The Bottom Line
RegScale is a strong tool for the documentation side of CMMC compliance. PolicyCortex is built for the enforcement side.
Organizations that invest only in documentation automation achieve well-organized records of their compliance posture. Organizations that invest in enforcement automation maintain genuine compliance continuously — which is what CMMC actually requires.
See PolicyCortex side by side
Connect your cloud accounts and see how PolicyCortex compares in your own environment — not a marketing deck.