Last week, the government announced two sets of proposed revisions to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to improve the cybersecurity of the government’s information systems. Both sets of revisions relate to President Biden’s May 2021 Executive Order 14028 on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity.
First, the Department of Defense (DoD), the General Services Administration (GSA), and NASA proposed revisions to the FAR that will standardize cybersecurity requirements for unclassified federal information systems (FISs). Because government contract requirements are “largely based on agency-specific policies and regulations” that can result in “inconsistent security requirements across contracts,” the new regulations seek to harmonize the requirements across federal agencies.