Government contractor to pay $875,000 in False Claims Act case

Author

Taylor Hawes
October 20, 2025

🔎 Cyber Watch 🔎

Government contractor to pay $875,000 in False Claims Act case over cybersecurity failures

A US defence-contractor, Georgia Tech Research Corporation (GTRC), has agreed to pay $875,000 to resolve allegations that it failed to meet required cybersecurity measures under its research contracts with the United States Department of Defense (DoD). 

What happened:

  • GTRC, and its affiliate Georgia Institute of Technology, allegedly failed to maintain anti-virus/anti-malware tools on equipment at its Astrolavos Lab, even while conducting sensitive cyber-defence research for the DoD. 

  • It also reportedly lacked a system security plan for the lab, and submitted a summary-level cybersecurity assessment score that was allegedly false. 

  • The whistle-blowers, labelled under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act, will receive a share of the recovery—about $201,250

Why it matters

  • This case highlights the risk when contractors don’t adhere to mandated cybersecurity controls—even when working on sensitive government projects.

  • It serves as a warning to the supply-chain and research community that compliance gaps can result in legal liability.

  • From a reader’s perspective: if your organisation is a contractor (or vendor) to government or critical infrastructure, this is a reminder to audit whether required security controls and reporting mechanisms are truly in place—not just on paper

Key takeaway

Maintaining technical controls (such as AV/AM tools) and proper documentation (security plans, realistic assessments) matters just as much as executing them. Failure in either dimension may trigger legal or regulatory exposure

🎙️ Tech Briefing On‑Air 🎙️

Words as weapons: how we talk to AI

In this episode, co-hosts explore how our language—with tone, phrasing and intent—can influence the performance of large language models (LLMs) and expose new security risks.

Takeaways: 

  • The way employees talk to AI matters: prompts can spiral performance up or down, or even expose vulnerabilities.

  • Attackers are now turning everyday language into prompt-injection exploits—i.e., using how we speak to AI as an attack surface.

  • The idea of “AI as a new employee” is becoming real. That raises questions of culture, trust and continuous security testing.

If your organization uses LLMs or generative AI, assess how personnel are interacting with those systems. Are there policies guiding proper prompts, tone, or risk mitigation? Consider whether your red-team/pen-test scope now needs to cover adversarial prompts, not just code or network attacks. This episode is a strong reminder that the human-machine interface is increasingly a security control point.

🤝 Partner Intel 🤝

ThreatLocker

ThreatLocker is a cybersecurity company founded in 2017 that focuses on Zero Trust endpoint protection. Its platform combines application allow-listing, storage control, and network management to prevent unauthorized software from running. The company’s signature Ringfencing technology restricts what legitimate applications can do, reducing the chance of exploitation through approved programs. ThreatLocker’s approach goes beyond traditional antivirus tools by controlling processes, scripts, and user actions at the endpoint level. This makes it particularly relevant for organizations facing growing ransomware and remote-work risks.

🤖 AI Runtime 🤖

Industrial OT systems shift from patch-work defence to continuous, adaptive cybersecurity

An article from Industrial Cyber highlights how operational-technology (OT) security in industrial environments is moving from reactive tools to continuous, adaptive protection.

 Key points:

  • Many OT environments still run on legacy protocols (Modbus, BACnet, SMBv1) that lack encryption or modern security controls. 

  • The new approach uses AI-powered anomaly recognition, network micro-segmentation and partner/supply-chain telemetry. 

  • Risk quantification is shifting: rather than “colour charts” (red/yellow/green), boards want estimates like “X hours downtime” or “$Y financial impact”. 

  • Because of long lifecycles in OT devices, organisations cannot always rely on frequent patches; instead they must adopt design-based security, segmentation and continuous verification.

As industrial systems connect more with IT and cloud / partner networks, the “air-gap” myth is fading. Adaptivity is essential. For users in manufacturing, energy, utilities or supply-chain sectors: this means security controls must extend beyond standard IT infrastructure. From a strategy viewpoint: executive teams should map cyber risk to operational risk. Boards increasingly demand this linkage.

đź“Š By the Numbers đź“Š

$93.75 billion

AI in the cybersecurity market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 24.3% between 2023 and 2030, resulting in $93.75 billion by 2030.

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Until Wednesday’s edition - Let’s keep that zero-day count at zero!