The Justice Department said two Delaware-based defense contractors, ILC Dover LP and ILC Astrospace LLC, agreed to pay the government $13 million to resolve allegations that they failed to meet cybersecurity requirements under their contracts with the Army, NASA and the Missile Defense Agency.
Federal prosecutors on Tuesday said the two companies, collectively described as ILC, submitted false or fraudulent claims for payment for their work done for the three federal agencies.
“Those claims were false or fraudulent because ILC knew it had not complied with those contracts’ cybersecurity requirements,” Justice Department officials said.
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Among the allegations dating back to 2018, ILC was accused of using a third-party company to store controlled unclassified information in the cloud without ensuring that the third party met the necessary security requirements.
“The best response to cyberattacks is to prevent them from happening in the first place. The obligations that ILC violated exist to prevent bad actors from taking advantage of the United States’ technical innovation,” said Benjamin L. Wallace, U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware.
From January 2018 to March 2022, ILC failed to develop, document and periodically update a system security plan for each of its covered information systems, as required by the Defense Department and NASA contracts, Justice Department officials said.
“To protect sensitive information from cyber threats, defense and aerospace contractors must comply with the cybersecurity requirements in their federal contracts and subcontracts,” said Brett Shumate, an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s civil division.
“We will continue our efforts to hold accountable government contractors and subcontractors that fail to meet their cybersecurity commitments,” Mr. Shumate said.
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