April 2022

Last year, President Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, making June 19, the celebration of the end of slavery, a federal holiday. The second Juneteenth National Independence Day is fast approaching. This year, Juneteenth falls on a Sunday and will be observed on Monday, June 20, 2022.

This means a holiday for federal workers, but what does this mean for an employer with federal contracts or subcontracts? The following provides a brief overview of when Juneteenth is a paid holiday for a federal contractor’s employees under contracts or subcontracts subject to (i) the Service Contract Act (SCA), (ii) the Davis Bacon Act’s (DBA) labor standards provisions, or (iii) another contract provision governing paid holidays.Continue Reading Juneteenth Is Fast Approaching: Time to Check and Confirm Your Contractual Fringe Benefit Obligations for Paid Holidays

For just shy of a decade, the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) has had to operate under rules dictating the safeguarding of Controlled Unclassified Information, along with a strict 72-hour notification requirement if/when/should a “cyber incident” occur. For the uninitiated, these are the requirements found in the Department of Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) 252.204-7012. And for a large swath of government contractors, these requirements have been more bane than benefit, as many have struggled to meet the DFARS’ stringent requirements.

Well, critical infrastructure industry, welcome to the party! Soon, companies involved in all sectors of critical infrastructure will need to comply with new federal reporting requirements for cybersecurity incidents and ransom payments after President Joe Biden signed The Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022 (the Act) into law on March 15, 2022. Tied to an omnibus appropriations package, the Act requires entities involved in critical infrastructure to report cyber incidents to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within 72 hours and any paid ransom demands within 24 hours. While these new reporting obligations will not become effective until CISA promulgates rules to further define requirements, as the DIB’s effort has demonstrated, it would be wise to examine best practices in incident response plans to begin sooner rather than later.Continue Reading Critical Infrastructure Industry Drafted: Welcome to the Cyber War