Over the past several years, the government has begun to hold contractors and their subcontractors to heightened cybersecurity standards, in an effort to better protect federal data and respond quickly to breaches. As a result, Phillip Bantz warns, litigation connected to this and to False Claims Act liability “is bubbling to the surface”, with “a tsunami of False Claims Act whistleblower cases looming on the horizon.”
A District Court ruling in May allowing a case in which a whistleblower alleged that his former employer falsely asserted that it was complying with DoD cybersecurity standards, made it clear for the first time that “qui tam relators who allege that a contractor didn’t comply with cybersecurity requirements have a viable case against a contractor,” according to Andrew Mohr of Morris, Manning & Martin.
Furthermore, in July, Cisco Systems agreed to pay $8.6 million to settle a whistleblower suit alleging that it ran afoul of federal cybersecurity standards by selling the government video surveillance products with known vulnerabilities.