Photo of Ryan Burnette

Ryan Burnette

Subscribe to Ryan Burnette's Posts

Ryan Burnette advises clients on a range of issues related to government contracting. Mr. Burnette has particular experience with helping companies navigate mergers and acquisitions, FAR and DFARS compliance issues, public policy matters, government investigations, and issues involving government cost accounting and the Cost Accounting Standards.  Prior to joining Covington, Mr. Burnette served in the Office of Federal Procurement Policy in the Executive Office of the President, where he worked on government-wide contracting regulations and administrative actions affecting more than $400 billion dollars’ worth of goods and services each year.

Follow: Read more about Ryan BurnetteEmail

This is the sixth in the series of Covington blogs on implementation of Executive Order 14028, “Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity,” issued by President Biden on May 12, 2021 (the “Cyber EO”).  The first blog summarized the Cyber EO’s key provisions and timelines, and the second, third, fourth, and fifth blogs described the actions taken by various federal agencies to implement the EO during June, July, August, and September 2021, respectively.  This blog summarizes key actions taken to implement the Cyber EO during October 2021.

Although the recent developments this month are directly applicable to the U.S. Government, the standards being established for U.S. Government agencies could be adopted as industry standards for all organizations that develop or acquire software similar to various industries adopting the NIST Cybersecurity Framework as a security controls baseline.…

Continue Reading October 2021 Developments Under President Biden’s Cybersecurity Executive Order

In a December 2020 speech, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michael Granston warned that cybersecurity fraud could see enhanced enforcement under the False Claims Act (“FCA”).  On October 6, 2021, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced that the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) would be following through on that warning with the launch of the DOJ’s Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative.  The key component of the initiative is the use of the FCA against Government contractors and subcontractors that fail to comply with cybersecurity requirements, including information security standards and cyber incident reporting obligations, imposed by contract, statute, or regulation.

Under the FCA, the Government can recover treble damages and penalties from federal contractors and subcontractors that knowingly submit false claims for payment.  Notably, the FCA incentivizes private citizens (relators), including contractor employees, to file qui tam suits on behalf of the Government by guaranteeing them between 15 and 30 percent of the recovery.  DOJ stated that it intended to work with federal agencies, subject matter experts, and law enforcement partners on the Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative.  Recently, Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton confirmed that this initiative was also intended to incentivize relators and the aggressive relators’ bar to focus their attention on potential cybersecurity noncompliance as the basis for qui tam actions.…

Continue Reading DOJ Announces New Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative

This is the fifth in a series of Covington blogs on implementation of Executive Order 14028, “Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity”, issued by President Biden on May 12, 2021 (the “Cyber EO”).  The first blog summarized the Cyber EO’s key provisions and timelines, and the second, third, and fourth blogs described the actions taken by various federal government agencies to implement the EO during June, July, and August 2021, respectively.  This blog summarizes  key actions taken to implement the Cyber EO during September 2021.

I.   Actions Taken During September 2021 to Modernize Federal Government Cybersecurity

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) publically released a draft zero trust architecture strategy for federal agencies on September 9, 2021.  On that same day, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) issued two draft documents designed to further OMB’s zero trust strategy: the Zero Trust Maturity Model and the Cloud Security Technical Reference Architecture.  Each of these documents was required by Section 3 of the Cyber EO to modernize and standardize federal government agency approaches to cybersecurity.…

Continue Reading September 2021 Developments Under President Biden’s Cybersecurity Executive Order

This blog continues Covington’s review of important deadlines and milestones in implementing the Executive Order on Improving the Nations’ Cybersecurity (E.O. 14028, or the “Cyber EO”) issued by President Biden on May 12, 2021.  Previous blogs have discussed developments under the Cyber EO in June 2021 and July 2021.  This blog focuses on developments affecting the EO that occurred during August 2021.

The Cyber EO requires federal agencies to meet several important deadlines in August 2021.  These deadlines are in the areas of enhancing critical software supply chain security, improving the federal government’s investigative and remediation capabilities, and modernizing federal agency approaches to cybersecurity.  In addition, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) took several significant actions related to supply chain security in August 2021, not all of which were driven by deadlines in the Cyber EO.  This blog examines the actions taken by federal agencies to meet the EO’s August deadlines as well as the NIST actions referred to above.…

Continue Reading August 2021 Developments Under President Biden’s Cybersecurity Executive Order

On May 12, 2021, the Biden Administration issued an Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity (the “EO”).  The EO sets out a list of deliverables due from a number of governmental entities in June 2021 and successive months.  Our overall summary of the EO and its deliverables can be found here, and our discussion of the EO deliverables that were due in June 2021 can be found here.  This blog addresses the EO deliverables in July 2021.
Continue Reading July 2021 Developments Under the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity

On May 12, 2021 the Biden Administration issued an “Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity” (EO).  Among other things, the EO sets out a list of deliverables from a variety of government entities.  A number of these deliverables were due in June, including a definition of “critical software,” the minimum requirements for a software bill of materials, and certain internal actions imposed on various federal agencies.
Continue Reading June 2021 Developments Under the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity

On February 24, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order entitled “Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains” (the “Order”). Among other things, the Order is an initial step toward accomplishing the Biden Administration’s goal of building more resilient American supply chains that avoid shortages of critical products, facilitate investments to maintain America’s competitive edge, and…

As described in an earlier blog post, the Department of Defense (DoD) released an Interim Rule on September 29, 2020 that address DoD’s increased requirements for assessing whether contractors are compliant with the 110 security controls in National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-171 (NIST 800-171).[1]  Under this new Interim Rule, DoD offerors must have a current assessment on file with DoD to document their compliance with NIST 800-171 before they can be eligible to be considered for award.  The Interim Rule specifically requires contractors to ensure that a summary score from an assessment conducted under DoD’s NIST 800-171 Assessment Methodology is submitted into a DoD enterprise application called the Supplier Performance Risk System (SPRS).[2]  We evaluate below how DoD may use the NIST 800-171 assessment scores in SPRS, as well as how updates to SPRS more generally are likely to impact contractors.
…
Continue Reading How is DoD Planning to Use the Supplier Performance Risk System (SPRS)?

On August 13, 2020, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released new revisions to its Guidance for Grants and Agreements set forth under 2 CFR (commonly referred to as the Uniform Guidance).  The Uniform Guidance governs the terms of federal funding issued by agencies, including grants, cooperative agreements, federal loans, and non-cash assistance awards. …

The National Institute for Standards and Technology released the draft of NIST Special Publication 800-172 (“NIST SP 800-172”) on July 6, 2020.  This draft special publication succeeds the prior draft NIST SP 800-171B that NIST published in June 2019, and operates as a supplement to the NIST SP 800-171 controls that federal contractors generally must comply with in order to transmit, process, and store Controlled Unclassified Information (“CUI”).

Like the draft of NIST SP 800-171B released last year that it replaces, the publication recognizes that the basic and derived security controls in NIST SP 800-171 are “not designed to address APTs [Advanced Persistent Threats].”  As the publication notes,  “the APT may find ways to breach and/or compromise boundary defenses and deploy malicious code within a defender’s system.”  Thus, the additional safeguards in NIST SP 800-172 are meant to “outmaneuver, confuse, deceive, mislead, and impede the adversary—that is, take away the adversary’s tactical advantage and protect and preserve the organization’s critical programs and high value assets.”

Comments on the draft are due on August 21, 2020.…

Continue Reading National Institute for Standards and Technology Releases Draft of NIST SP 800-172