Megan Brown Comments on Cybersecurity Guidelines for Government Contractors

February 24, 2014

Megan L. Brown, a partner in Wiley Rein’s Appellate Practice and Communications Practice, was quoted in a February 18 Law360 article about new, voluntary guidelines set forth by the Obama administration for federal contractors to protect systems from cyberattacks.

The guidelines were developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology as part of President Barack Obama’s February 2013 executive order.  The guidelines, while voluntary, shed light on potential government expectations about security best practices, and as such may impact contractors as cybersecurity becomes more important to government procurement efforts. Those efforts could affect companies even beyond the contracting community. 

“In the face of the government’s present inability or unwillingness to directly regulate critical infrastructure and beyond, I would think that anyone in the contracting space should be paying attention to the framework and seeing how they stack up to its expectations,” said Ms. Brown.  “The contracting community has often been at the forefront of new government efforts, because it is easier to tack on additional responsibilities to contracts than to regulate private industry directly.”

Click here to read the article.