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Security

FTC report puts Data Privacy in the spotlight.

May 8, 2012 by Brett Stupakevich
with 53 views
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From tweets to transactions, online activity produces huge volumes of data – and while businesses are primarily focused on how to use the data, consumer groups are increasingly concerned about how data collection affects personal privacy. [read more]

The Amazon Effect: Zuora, Citrix and the Acceleration of the Cloud Economy

May 7, 2012 by Brent Leary
with 82 views
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When Amazon started making their infrastructure and IT processes available outside the company firewall in 2006 it was a tipping point of sorts for business consumerization of the cloud.  Companies of all sizes leveraged a variety of Amazon Web Services to store data, stream video, run online stores and a ton of other things. And... [read more]

Does Apple Need Ten Years of Trustworthy Computing?

April 30, 2012 by Alex Olesker
with 24 views
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Just as Bill Gates said ten years ago about Microsoft, users are connecting a wide array of Apple products, from computers to phones, tablets, and accessories, to the internet and expect privacy, reliability, and security. If versions of Flashback as well as novel malware for Apple operating systems continue to proliferate, Apple will need to implement its own version of the Trustworthy Computing drive. [read more]

CISPA Passes in the House, 3D Modelling of DoD Networks, and More

April 28, 2012 by Alex Olesker
with 78 views
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Image by opensourceway via Flickr

Today’s federal cybersecurity and information technology news round-up. [read more]

CTO Security Report

April 24, 2012 by Bryan Halfpap
with 46 views
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Photo credit: Schuilr

A 15-year-old Austrian boy was discovered to be the culpit behind the web-based attacks on the web presences of over 250 companies. The boy, using attack software, techniques, and anonymization services and programs he found on the internet, mounted a successful campaign in order to win the favor and attention of his hacker peers and garner points on a hacker scoreboard. [read more]

Why a Chargeback Model for Private Cloud May Be Problematic

April 14, 2012 by Joe McKendrick
with 98 views
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Photo: Wikimedia

Essentially, private cloud is pitched as a more secure answer to public cloud — only services are purchased from IT or some other group in the organization, versus an outside provider such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft. However, from an economics standpoint, the two models aren’t comparable [read more]

Cybersecurity Gaps Across Government, New Monitoring Tool, and More

April 12, 2012 by Alex Olesker
with 22 views
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This month, the Department of Energy, in working with the White House, Department of Homeland Security, and power companies, will test a voluntary reporting model to discover cybersecurity gaps in electricity delivery systems. More here.A researcher at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National... [read more]

Avoiding Cyber Threat Amnesia

March 25, 2012 by Bob Gourley
with 93 views
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My involvement in the non-profit educational and research organization Cyber Conflict Studies Association over the last several years has led me to an observation about federal policy makers and cyber security. This observation probably applies to many commercial organizations and to academia (and possibly even to you) so we may be... [read more]

Passwords are the Weakest Link in Enterprise IT Security

March 18, 2012 by Joe McKendrick
with 49 views
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Organizations are spending millions of dollars to beef up their data, application and network security, but still keep overlooking one obvious area of exposure: user passwords. The Trustwave 2012 Global Security Report has just been published, identifying areas of vulnerabilities that persist within organizations, and threaten data... [read more]

The 4 Biggest Problems with Big Data

March 14, 2012 by Brett Stupakevich
with 672 views
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photo-oasis/shutterstock

Most companies collect gobs of data but they don’t have comprehensive approaches for centralizing the information. According to a recent survey by LogLogic, 59% of the more than 200 security officers who responded say they are either using disparate systems for gathering data, not managing log data, or they use antiquated spreadsheets. [read more]

INSA Report: Cloud Computing: Risks, Benefits, and Mission Enhancement for the Intelligence Community

March 14, 2012 by Bob Gourley
with 84 views
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I was INSA’s lead on the study that lead to this document, so I had the honor of working with a large team of volunteers from government, industry and academia during its production. [read more]

exclusive

Are Public Clouds Complex Environments?

March 12, 2012 by Paul Barsch
with 90 views
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A recent analyst report suggests public clouds are prone to failure because they are inherently complex. However, just because there are multiple interacting objects in a particular environment, this doesn’t necessarily imply complexity. [read more]

Update on the 6 March 2012 Government Big Data Forum

February 27, 2012 by Bob Gourley
with 103 views
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This is the second annual gathering of the government and industry Big Data community. We have planned a day of interaction between and among members of government agencies, solution integrators and technology vendors. Speakers include thought leaders in Big Data from the CIA, DoD, DoT and some of Silicon Valley’s greatest Big Data capability providers. [read more]

Predictive Policing with Big Data

February 23, 2012 by Alex Olesker
with 281 views
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UCLA mathematician George Mohler noticed that, over time, crime maps resemble other natural phenomenon and modified algorithms used to predict aftershocks to instead predict future property crimes from past data. Using seismologists’ models for crime isn’t as crazy as it sounds, since they’ve already been adopted in epidemiology and finance. [read more]

Passwords Suck: Learn About and Use Multi-Factor Authentication

February 14, 2012 by Bryan Halfpap
with 233 views
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Passwords suck. They are long, hard to remember (even if you have easier-to-remember phrases), moreso when new, and are largely a difficulty for users to user properly.  Combined with the fact that many users choose easy-to-guess or easy-to-ascertain passwords based off of commonly-known facts about themselves and that they will... [read more]

An Analysis of A NASA Dbase Hack-and-Dump

February 8, 2012 by Bryan Halfpap
with 91 views
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Recently, some news of a NASA hack-and-dump passed my twitter deck. I decided after watching a few of my friends re-tweet the news that it might be worth checking out. At least I’d see if I could perform some password analysis on any dumped credentials, or even test out the new Crucialpoint Cloudera Hadoop password cracker on any leftover hashes. [read more]