OMB Approves Contractor Data Security Rule

Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had approved the new Federal Acquisition Regulation establishing Basic Safeguarding of Contractor Information Systems. As I noted in an earlier post, the rule would add a new subpart and contract clause for the basic safeguarding of contractor information systems that contain, transmit, or process Federal contract information.

This rule would only directly apply to federal contractors operating under FAR based contracts (DOD, NASA, and GSA for instance), but it does establish a precedence for federally established security rules that apply to unclassified IT systems.