Login | April 05, 2025
SEC establishes new enforcement unit for cyber and emerging tech
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: April 4, 2025
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently announced the formation of an updated task force to fight cyber-related crimes and to help retail owners of cyber/crypto assets maintain their holdings against the nefarious folks who would want to take them away or somehow disrupt their ownership thereof.
The current Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit will be replaced by the new Cyber and Emerging Technologies (CETU) unit, which will work in conjunction with the also newly-established Crypto Task Force.
Together, the two units will investigate the problems of uber-capitalists as they try to figure out how to make money on the scam of cryptocurrency without, you know, losing money.
Because...money.
There will likely be a de-emphasis on the prior organization’s attention to crimestopping.
Or so some analysts have written.
Specifically, the new CETU, which will have about 30 fraud specialists and attorneys spread across multiple agencies, will focus on “combatting cyber-related misconduct and protect[ing] retail investors from bad actors in the emerging technologies space.”
According to Acting Chair Mark Uyeda, “[i]mportantly, the new unit will also allow the SEC to deploy enforcement resources judiciously…the unit will not only protect investors but will also facilitate capital formation and market efficiency by clearing the way for innovation to grow. It will root out those seeking to misuse innovation to harm investors and diminish confidence in new technologies.”
Not sure what all of that means, but there’s nothing in all that about stopping crime.
Just that the government will intervene if anybody tries to stop new tech from increasing stakeholder value. OK. Whatever.
Also not sure what “new technologies” means.
That could mean AI taking over the world, or robot dogs taking over the world, or any other dystopian Black Mirror stuff that Open AI has hidden from us.
Anyway, the governmental ground is now cleared for “new technology.”
(Probably) gone will be enforcement actions against crimes like nondisclosure of a hack, like the charges recently brought against Solar Winds for not telling anyone that they had been compromised until it was too late.
We’ll see.
It’s new tech! It’s a comic book life now, and the government is just enforcing it.
Thanks and h/t for the analysis from Cydney Poser at Cooley LLP