Two technology contractors have agreed to pay the U.S. government over $12 million in total to settle a civil court case alleging they allowed employees to work on a Defense Department contract without security clearance.
Services firms NetCracker Technology and CSC will pay $11.4 million and $1.35 million, respectively, according to a Department of Justice release .
It reveals that the two were accused of contravening the False Claims Act by using staff who had not gone through required vetting procedures to work on a Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) contract.
CSC was the prime contractor on the project to provide software to manage the Defense Department telecoms network between 2008 and 2013.
However, during that time, NetCracker is alleged to have knowingly used employees without security clearance, resulting in CSC “recklessly” submitting false claims for payment to DISA, the notice claimed.
A Washington Post report went further, claiming that some of the code written for the project was developed by Russian programmers and subsequently placed onto U.S. government computer networks with no testing for backdoors or other possibly malicious elements.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/tech-contractors-pay-12m-claims/
