Defense Contractors to Face Added Costs With Cybersecurity Audit

Thousands of smaller defense contractors face new cybersecurity standards that will soon be the cost of doing business as the Pentagon seeks to prevent hacking and theft from countries such as China and Iran.

The Defense Department plans to release the standards at the end of January as it rushes toward requiring new universal auditing of contractors’ cyber safeguards by this summer. The military’s vast commercial supply chain, especially smaller vendors, has emerged as a critical national security weakness.

“This can be a burden to small companies, particularly,” Pentagon acquisition chief Ellen Lord said in December. “So we have been ...