Raytheon to Pay $8.4M for Non-Compliance with Cybersecurity Requirements

Raytheon Company, RTX Corporation, and Nightwing Group LLC, and Nightwing Intelligence Solutions LLC, have agreed to pay $8.4 million to resolve allegations that Raytheon violated the False Claims Act by failing to comply with cybersecurity requirements in contracts or subcontracts involving the Department of Defense.

Raytheon is a subsidiary of Arlington, Virginia-based defense contractor RTX Corporation. In 2024, RTX Corporation sold its cybersecurity businesses, which since became part of Dulles, Virginia-based Nightwing. The settlement resolves conduct that allegedly occurred between 2015 and 2021, prior to Nightwing’s acquisition of the business.

The settlement resolves allegations that Raytheon and its then-subsidiary Raytheon Cyber Solutions Inc., failed to implement required cybersecurity controls on an internal development system that was used to perform unclassified work on certain DoD contracts.

The U.S. Department of Justice alleged that Raytheon and RCSI failed to develop and implement a system security plan for the system, as required by DoD cybersecurity regulations, and failed to ensure that the system complied with other cybersecurity requirements in the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement and Federal Acquisition Regulation, which requires federal contractors to apply basic safeguarding requirements to information systems that process or store federal contract information.

The settlement resolved allegations that Raytheon used its noncompliant internal system to develop, use, or store covered defense information and federal contract information during its performance on 29 DoD contracts and subcontracts.

The settlement resolves a lawsuit filed under the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act, which permit private parties to sue on behalf of the government when they believe a defendant has submitted false claims for government funds. The settlement in this case provides for the whistleblower, Branson Kenneth Fowler Sr., a former director of engineering with Raytheon, to receive a $1,512,000 share of the settlement amount.