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DoD's Own Cyber Monday Deal: Releasing DFARS Cyber Enhancement Guidance

Client Alert | 1 min read | 11.27.18

Just in time for the holidays, the Defense Department published final guidance to the DoD acquisition community that details strategies to enhance existing cybersecurity requirements for Covered Defense Information (CDI) provided by the DFARS Safeguarding Clause 252.204-7012. The DoD’s guidance contains two documents that clarify how DoD will communicate their cybersecurity expectations to contractors, including where those expectations exceed what the DFARS Safeguarding Clause requires:

  • Guidance for Reviewing System Security Plans (SSPs) outlines how the DoD expects to evaluate contractor SSPs, including the preferred method of meeting each NIST security control and the anticipated consequences of not yet having implemented those controls.
  • Guidance for Assessing Compliance and Enhancing Protections provides objectives that requiring activities can tailor to assess contractors’ safeguarding of CDI, including how to incorporate compliance with NIST SP 800-171 and supply chain management as evaluation criteria in solicitations.

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Client Alert | 3 min read | 11.21.25

A Sign of What’s to Come? Court Dismisses FCA Retaliation Complaint Based on Alleged Discriminatory Use of Federal Funding

On November 7, 2025, in Thornton v. National Academy of Sciences, No. 25-cv-2155, 2025 WL 3123732 (D.D.C. Nov. 7, 2025), the District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed a False Claims Act (FCA) retaliation complaint on the basis that the plaintiff’s allegations that he was fired after blowing the whistle on purported illegally discriminatory use of federal funding was not sufficient to support his FCA claim. This case appears to be one of the first filed, and subsequently dismissed, following Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s announcement of the creation of the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative on May 19, 2025, which “strongly encourages” private individuals to file lawsuits under the FCA relating to purportedly discriminatory and illegal use of federal funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in violation of Executive Order 14173, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity (Jan. 21, 2025). In this case, the court dismissed the FCA retaliation claim and rejected the argument that an organization could violate the FCA merely by “engaging in discriminatory conduct while conducting a federally funded study.” The analysis in Thornton could be a sign of how forthcoming arguments of retaliation based on reporting allegedly fraudulent DEI activity will be analyzed in the future....

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