Shoddy infosec costs PwC spinoff and NMA $11.3M in settlement with Uncle Sam

The US Department of Justice secured $11.3M in settlements from Guidehouse ($7.6M) and Nan McKay ($3.7M) after their deployment of New York's Emergency Rental Assistance Program in 2021 exposed applicant PII because mandated pre-production cybersecurity testing was not properly completed and Guidehouse stored PII in an unapproved third-party cloud; the leak was detected within 12 hours when data became indexable by commercial search engines for a limited group, prompting settlement agreements and a whistleblower award.