The waiver track§101.665
You may not need the full program. Let's find out.
The rule contains real relief for genuinely low-tech operations — and the Coast Guard itself pointed inland operators to the waiver path in June 2026. It also contains rules about how relief works, and most of the sales pitches you will hear ignore them.
How relief actually works
Five facts before anyone pitches you
- The assessment comes first, always
- A request without a completed Cybersecurity Assessment attached is returned — even from an operator with no computers at all. The assessment is how you prove the claim.
- Relief is per-requirement
- "Exempt us from everything" gets sent back. The realistic win: relief from most technical measures, while incident reporting, basic training and records duties survive.
- Cost is an invalid ground
- The case must be technical, architectural or operational. "It's expensive" is explicitly rejected.
- The lane is open now
- Waiver and equivalency requests go to Commandant (CG-5P) via DoD SAFE and are being accepted and processed today — unlike full plans, which the Coast Guard is holding. Same July 16, 2027 deadline.
- Filing suspends nothing
- Until relief is granted, the obligations stand. Every waiver client needs a contingency posture, and ours ship with one.
The product
Screen, package, guard
- 1 · Waiver Screen — about a week
- A structured questionnaire, a 90-minute interview, and a technology census, for a small fixed fee quoted up front. You get a Relief Eligibility Memo: which requirements you could realistically shed, each rated strong, arguable or unlikely, with the citations. If the honest answer is that you need the full program, the memo says so — and the screen fee credits in full to whichever path you take.
- 2 · Waiver Package — quoted fixed, 3–4 weeks
- Everything a request must contain: the required Cybersecurity Assessment scoped to your actual operation, documented evidence of the environment, the request itself with specific citations and technical justification, filing to CG-5P via DoD SAFE, one round of Coast Guard follow-up — and a slim contingency plan kept ready, because filing does not suspend the obligations.
- 3 · Waiver Guard — a small monthly subscription
- The residual program relief never erases: incident-reporting readiness and on-call, training seats and records for whoever does touch IT, the records vault, and annual re-validation of the waiver's factual basis — new dispatch software or a new remote link changes the answer.
Why trust this
The incentives, stated plainly
- We never file when the screen says no
- The refusals are the reputation. A request the facts cannot support wastes your money and our name.
- No grant guarantees
- The Coast Guard has published no grant-rate data. Eligibility opinions are professional judgment with confidence levels — anyone promising approval is promising something the record cannot support.
- Denial credit
- If your request is denied or partially granted, half the package fee credits toward the full program build — honest, because roughly 60% of the waiver work reuses in a full plan.
1 weekto know where you stand
100%of the screen fee credits forward