Photo of Evan D. Wolff

Evan D. Wolff is a partner in Crowell & Moring's Washington, D.C. office, where he is co-chair of the firm's Chambers USA-ranked Privacy & Cybersecurity Group and a member of the Government Contracts Group. Evan has a national reputation for his deep technical background and understanding of complex cybersecurity legal and policy issues. Calling upon his experiences as a scientist, program manager, and lawyer, Evan takes an innovative approach to developing blended legal, technical, and governance mechanisms to prepare companies with rapid and comprehensive responses to rapidly evolving cybersecurity risks and threats. Evan has conducted training and incident simulations, developed response plans, led privileged investigations, and advised on hundreds of data breaches where he works closely with forensic investigators. Evan also counsels businesses on both domestic and international privacy compliance matters, including the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). He is also a Registered Practitioner under the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) framework.

Overview

On March 27, 2023, President Biden signed the Executive Order on Prohibition on Use by the United States Government of Commercial Spyware that Poses Risks to National Security (EO), restricting federal agencies’ use of commercial spyware.  The Biden Administration cited targeted attacks utilizing commercial spyware on U.S. officials and human rights abuses abroad as

On March 22, 2022, the Department of Defense (DoD) issued a final rule requiring contracting officers to consider supplier risk assessments in DoD’s Supplier Performance Risk System (SPRS) when evaluating offers. SPRS is a DoD enterprise system that collects contractor quality and delivery performance data from a variety of systems to develop three risk assessments:

On March 2, 2023, the Biden Administration released the 35-page National Cybersecurity Strategy (the “Strategy”) with a goal “to secure the full benefits of a safe and secure digital ecosystem for all Americans.”

Summary and Analysis

The Strategy highlights the government’s commitment to investing in cybersecurity research and new technologies to protect the nation’s security

This has not been a joyful winter for energy industry executives. They have repeatedly awoken to alerts that substations in the Northwest and Southeast have been physically attacked and that a major engineering firm was the subject of a ransomware cyberattack that may have compromised utility data.

Federal regulators are taking notice. On December 7

Yesterday, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released Memorandum M-22-18, implementing software supply chain security requirements that will have a significant impact on software companies and vendors in accordance with Executive Order 14028, Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity.  The Memorandum requires all federal agencies and their software suppliers to comply with the NIST

After much anticipation, the Cyber AB, formerly known as the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Accreditation Body, recently released its pre-decisional draft CMMC Assessment Process (CAP).  The CAP describes the overarching procedures and guidance that CMMC Third-Party Assessment Organizations (C3PAOs) will use to assess entities seeking CMMC certification.  The current version of the CAP applies

Aiming to identify, enhance, and test supply chain vulnerabilities in the energy sector and cybersecurity response capabilities between public and private sectors, the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources approved legislation that directs the Department of Energy (DoE) to create several new programs towards the development of “advanced cybersecurity applications and technologies” for the sector.[1]  The Energy Cybersecurity Act of 2019 (the Act) directs DoE to establish programs that identify supply chain vulnerabilities and expand Federal cooperation and coordination for responses to cyber threats.

If passed, the Act will require the DoE to:

Continue Reading Energy Cybersecurity Act of 2019

The Department of Defense (DoD) has released Version 1.0 of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), Appendices A-F, and an Overview Briefing. While Version 1.0 largely mirrors the draft Version 0.7, the final version includes notable revisions. Please click here to see the full client alert.

The Department of Defense recently released a memorandum directing the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) to implement and assess company-wide cyber compliance with the DFARS Safeguarding Clause and related security standard, NIST SP 800-171.  For further analysis, visit our Government Contracts Legal Forum blog post.

The Navy has recently issued a policy memorandum entitled “Implementation of Enhanced Security Controls on Select Defense Industrial Base Partner Networks” that calls for heightened cybersecurity requirements and oversight for “critical” government contractors handling their sensitive government data, broadly referred to as controlled unclassified information (“CUI”) or “covered defense information” (CDI) within the defense sector.