Dive Brief:

• Honeywell Aerospace recently reached a $2.04 million settlement with the Justice Department to resolve allegations that it failed to comply with cybersecurity requirements under a Department of Defense contract.
• The agreement resolves allegations from April 1, 2020, through Dec. 31, 2023, involving an IT unit of Honeywell International that submitted false claims for payment by not complying with DOD’s cybersecurity assessment requirements, according to the whistleblower’s complaint filed in March 2022.
• The settlement also resolves the whistleblower’s lawsuit filed under the False Claims Act, which allows a private individual to file to sue an entity on behalf of the federal government. The whistleblower, former Honeywell employee Rachel Tenney, will receive $375,823, according to the agreement.

Dive Insight:

DOD’s cybersecurity assessment requirements are mandatory under the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s regulations, which aims to safeguard sensitive information.

The requirement is part of the DOD’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program, which has been in the works since 2019. It also falls under the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement which mandates that contractors report cyber incidents to DOD.

The federal government claimed in the lawsuit that Honeywell began its “fraudulent scheme” when it received a quantum computing contract in 2020, according to court documents. It was around the same time period that...

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