As we anticipated last spring, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has signaled that it will utilize civil enforcement of the False Claims Act (FCA) to address new and emerging cybersecurity threats. On October 6, 2021, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced the launch of a new cyber-fraud initiative led by the Fraud Section of DOJ’s Commercial Litigation Branch. The new initiative will focus FCA enforcement against federal government contractors or grant recipients who fail to follow required cybersecurity standards.… More
Tag Archives: Department of Justice
Albert Gonzalez Gets 20 Years for TJX / Heartland Breaches
Last week was a tough week for Albert Gonzalez, the so-called "leader of the largest hacking and identity theft ring ever prosecuted by the U.S. government." Gonzalez received a sentence of 20 years of imprisonment in two separate federal cases against him. The hacker, known variously as "segvec," "soupnazi" and "j4guar17" pled guilty in the New Jersey and Massachusetts cases for his role as mastermind of the two largest financial data breaches ever,… More
Incident of the Week: Declassified Documents Show FBI Expanding Data Mining Efforts Over 1.5 Billion Personal Records (And Counting)
Declassified documents obtained (but not published) by WIRED Magazine indicate that the FBI has been hard at work expanding a database of Americans’ personal and financial information. According to WIRED, the FBI’s National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) has compiled a database of “more than 1.5 billion government and private-sector records” and has been mining this database for use in criminal investigations. The data, which apparently has been obtained from a number of private companies,… More