Tale of two smart-grid bills
Bills now before the House Homeland Security and Energy and Commerce Committees take different approaches toward regulating and strengthening the security of the electric grid against cyberattack.
DOE, NIST aim to secure smart grid
Parallel efforts to secure a new, technologically advanced power grid are taking place in Congress on the regulatory side and at NIST and the Energy Department on the technology side.
GAO: Better planning needed for most difficult phase of universal broadband deployment
Ninety percent of the U.S. population has access to broadband Internet connections; providing access to the remaining 10 percent, mostly in remote rural areas, will require a shift in federal policy from current market-based incentives to more direct funding, according to the GAO.
Keith Rhodes | Effective IT security starts with risk analysis, former GAO CTO says
Keith Rhodes, now chief technology officer at QinetiQ North America’s Mission Solutions Group, discusses the importance of setting priorities for protection and who in government is doing a good job with security.
IT policy in the U.S. goes back 100 years
The Cyberspace Policy Review continues a tradition that dates back to the telegraph.
Cybersecurity gets a seat on new Homeland Security Advisory Council
Black Hat and DEFCON founder Jeff Moss is among the new members on the advisory council, and expects cybersecurity to get a higher profile in DHS.
Latest version of Digital Signature Standard expands key sizes, adds security
The Commerce Department has given final approval to FIPS 186-3, which strengthens requirements for the cryptographic algorithms used for digital signatures.
William Jackson | Score one for the good guys in battle against spam
A temporary restraining order taking a rogue Internet service provider offline could mean we might see a little less spam in our inboxes, for now.
GAO: IRS halts development of Customer Account Data Engine
According to the Government Accountability Office, the IRS has suspended development of an automated account management program because of increasing complexity, despite an increase in the number of tax returns filed electronically.
Federal IT security recommendations released in final NIST draft
The latest draft of this revision of Special Publication 800-53 contains security controls for national security as well as other IT systems, and was developed in conjunction with the military and intelligence communities.
Security strengthened for .org domain
Implementation of DNSSEC in the .org domain is the first since the .gov domain was signed in February and marks the beginning of a beta-test phase before the service is rolled out to domains within the zone.
A Gordian knot awaits future cybersecurity chief
Of the major goals laid out in the Cyberspace Policy Review, creating an effective information sharing and incident response capability across government and the private sector presents some of the greatest technological challenges and trickiest policy minefields.
DOD concerned about gaps in GPS service
The Defense Department’s struggling to get a new generation of Global Positioning System satellites in orbit before aging satellites fail.
Obama to revamp cybersecurity policy, will name cybersecurity coordinator
President Obama will appoint a cybersecurity coordinator who will anchor a suite of initiatives recommended in the findings of the 60-day review of the nation’s cybersecurity posture.
Shaw AFB gets help in bringing lost data back from the grave
After a crashed RAID storage unit threatened to disrupt life at Shaw Air Force Base, DriveSavers was able to resurrect data from the failed system.
All storage systems fail, so be ready to recover
RAID systems offer large capacity and a high level of redundancy to protect data. But redundancy is not immortality.
William Jackson | How about a little love for FISMA?
The Federal Information Security Management Act has become a whipping boy for everything lacking in government IT security, but the law gets too little credit for what it has accomplished—and often is blamed for things that are not its fault.
Federal advisory board: Bring privacy laws up to 21st-century speed
The Privacy Act of 1974 has been outstripped by technology, and a lack of leadership from Congress and the White House has resulted in inconsistent and inadequate protection of personal data, according to the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board.
SSA goes big on VOIP
The Social Security Administration is replacing phone systems at more than 1,500 field offices with a single, centrally managed voice-over-IP solution.
Patricia Titus | At TSA, a clean slate benefited cybersecurity efforts
Patricia Titus of Unisys Federal Systems talks about how the Transportation Security Administration implemented cybersecurity during her time as CISO.
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