Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan suggested Feb. 6 that contractors might be held liable for cyber breaches, National Defense reported.
“We want the bar to be set so high, it will become the condition of doing business” with the Pentagon, Shanahan said. “You can imagine if tomorrow … instead of having a financial disclosure statement, we want you to sign a cyber disclosure statement that says, ‘Everybody you do business with is secure,’” he said. “I don’t think you’d sign that tomorrow, but … we need to get to that level because your secrets, our secrets are exposed.” He did not detail how such a disclosure might operate.
Shanahan, who came to the Defense Department from Boeing, said, “I came from a company where product integrity and safety was the first order of business.”
“I think of things like safety, and cyber falls into that category — whether it’s safety or security, as being one of those things that should be uncompromising,” he said, Defense One reported.
Shanahan’s remarks came during this week’s WEST Conference co-hosted by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association and U.S. Naval Institute in San Diego.
Read more at National Defense and Defense One.
