Information Security: Today's Top Compliance Challenge For Government Contractors

A special column by Thomas A. Pettit, Senior Associate in the Government Contracts and National Security practice group at Arnold & Porter; the ideas presented here, particularly those that may prove to be in error, are the author's own and should not be attributed to any other.

Information security is a relatively broad concept that encompasses safeguarding and handling regulated and other sensitive data, including confidential and proprietary business information. Government contracts often involve extensive regulated data with varying (and overlapping) levels of sensitivity, ranging from (1) simple transactional information subject to few restrictions, to (2) Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) subject to disparate security requirements, all the way to (3) classified information that is highly restricted and, if disclosed improperly, could catastrophically harm the national security of the United States. Given the consequences of improper handling and