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Erik Dullea

As head of Husch Blackwell’s Cybersecurity practice group, Erik assists clients in all aspects of cybersecurity and information security compliance and data breach response. Erik previously served as the acting deputy associate general counsel for the National Security Agency’s cybersecurity practice group before returning to the firm in 2023.

Key point: 2026 may be a pivotal year for organizations to monitor cyber incident reporting requirements—the voluntary sharing allowed under CISA 2015 remains available, but only through September, and regulations delineating who and how mandatory reporting requirements are managed under CIRCIA are coming.

A recent ruling by the Southern District Court of New York sets a historical precedent for the use of generative AI platforms in the legal profession. The court found that a client’s prompts to a generative AI system and documents generated by AI to share with counsel are not protected by the attorney-client privilege or

Key point: Historically, civilian‑agency contractors who handled Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) enjoyed an informal compliance environment, with a requirement to adhere to NIST SP 800‑171 often framed as self‑attestation. That world is now decisively over, with the GSA following a path similar, but not identical, to the DoD’s CMMC requirements.

Key point: Recent legislative efforts in Massachusetts, seeking to add another comprehensive data privacy law to the national patchwork of state laws, and in California enacting a law to regulate AI development, occurred this week when the Massachusetts Senate unanimously sent Senate Bill 2608 to the state House, and California enacted the nation’s second substantive state law regulating AI.

Key point: Beginning November 10, 2025, DoD contracting officers will begin adding Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) requirements to solicitations, and contracting officers “shall not award a contract, task order, or delivery order to a [contractor] that does not have a current CMMC status at the CMMC level required by the solicitation.”