PubKCyber Interview: Aron Beezley of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings

PubKCyber interviewed Government Contracts attorney Aron Beezley about the rise in cybersecurity-related issues in bid protest litigation.

Q: Why do you think that cybersecurity is becoming more of a focus in bid protests? You’ve likened the increase in cybersecurity concerns to the rise of organizational conflicts of interest allegations a few years back – what makes topic ripe for increased protest attention?

A: Cybersecurity requirements are finding their way into solicitations with increasing frequency. Accordingly, cybersecurity requirements and issues are showing up in bid protests with increasing frequency. For instance, before 2013, only about three published bid protest decisions (counting decisions from both the Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims) mentioned “cybersecurity” (or “cyber security”). In 2013, 2014 and 2015, however, there have been approximately twenty published bid protest decisions, in total, that mention “cybersecurity” (or “cyber security”).

As cybersecurity breaches and incidents continue to occur, they will start to become the focus of bid protests and bid protest decisions. This is somewhat similar to the increase in bid protests involving organizational conflicts of interest (or “OCI”) issues that we saw in about the 2011 to 2014 timeframe. In the coming years, it is possible – even likely – that cybersecurity-related protest grounds will be commonplace, just like OCI-related protest grounds now are commonplace.

Read the complete PubKCyber interview, "PubKCyber Interview: Aron Beezley of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings," which first appeared on December 22, 2015.