LAS VEGAS (CNNMoney) — Wearing a t-shirt and jeans, America’s top spymaster — National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander, also the head of the U.S. Cyber Command — took the stage Friday at the nation’s largest hacker convention to deliver a recruiting pitch.
“In this room, this room right here, is the talent our nation needs to secure cyberspace,” Alexander told the standing-room-only audience at DefCon, a grassroots gathering in Las Vegas expected to draw a record 16,000 attendees this year. “We need great talent. We don’t pay as high as everybody else, but we’re fun to be around.” Keep reading →
New austerity is here to stay – coupled with more demand for user-friendly citizen engagement from our government workforce. And cybersecurity concerns are growing as well, as our enemies become more sophisticated and inventive. How can Federal agencies meet all three pressures – lowering costs while improving services and keeping data safe?
More than ever before, innovative technologies are needed across government, to keep the government workforce engaged while also helping them to effectively deliver support for the mission. Government is working hard today to implement the infrastructure needed to deliver more services, increase and enhance interaction and enable greater workforce mobility and citizen engagement. Mobility is growing in importance, even as cybersecurity becomes a bigger issue. Despite the promise of mobility to bring greater productivity and flexibility, 78 percent of federal IT professionals said mobility also brings greater security risks, according to a recent VMware survey. Keep reading →
As the federal government moves to widespread implementation of mobile device policies, the most attractive and cost effective approach appears to be personnel using their own personal devices to do their jobs.
But while BYOD policies make economic sense, the devil is in the details. This is especially important for the Defense Department and other federal organizations responsible for handling sensitive and classified data. Keep reading →
The Bipartisan Policy Center produced a report that is getting a fair amount of attention and raising some concerns. The report stated that the number of cyber attacks appears to be on the rise, along with financial losses.
This data was based on information from October 2011 through February 2012. The report indicates, that over 50,000 cyber attacks on private and government networks were reported to the Department of Homeland Security, including 86 attacks on “critical infrastructure networks.” Information also indicated that many private firms keep the fact that they experienced a cyber attack secret “because of fears, some justified, including harm to their reputations and potential loss of customers.” Keep reading →
A senior National Security Agency official today said the agency is racing to embrace an approach to mobile technology that once would have been unthinkable for one of the government’s most secretive agencies, by moving toward 100% end-to-end reliance on commercial communications technology.
NSA Director of Information Assurance Deborah Plunkett told an industry group today in Washington that, “Unless we do this, we will not be able to meet the demand signals from our customers.” Keep reading →
We have entered a new age of modern conflict. This new age is different from those we have experienced in the past and perhaps even more challenging. The military has dubbed cyber as the 5th domain and have embarked on establishing the capabilities for offensive, defensive and intelligence collection and analysis in this domain.
However, many are attempting to address this threat as they did traditional forms of conflict. Some have gone as far as to compare what has been called a cyber arms race to the cold war. Recent conversations and witnessed actions are cause for concern. Keep reading →
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has just released the draft of recommendations for addressing mobile device security. Among other points, the draft document recommends implementing centralized management technologies for both organization-issued and personally-owned mobile devices.
The update is considered timely and important due to the dramatic increase in the last two years of smartphone and tablet penetration, the variety of mobile devices and the pressure from employees to use their own devices. Keep reading →
The nation needs cyber-security legislation to authorize sharing of threat data between industry and government in real time, said Gen. Keith Alexander, chief of both the National Security Agency and the US Cyber Command, and it can be done without any danger to individual privacy.
“This cyber legislation that’s coming up is going to be absolutely vital to the future of our country,” said Gen. Alexander. Keep reading →
Conventional arms transfers – Exports (US$ millions – 2005; 1990 prices). Refers to the voluntary transfer of weapons destined for the armed forces or intelligence agencies of another country. It includes ships, aircraft, missiles, artillery, armored vehicles and guidance and radar systems. It excludes trucks, services, ammunition, small arms, support items, components and component technology. SOURCE: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The 193 United Nations diplomats are driving a treaty that would be the first legally binding global treaty that would regulate the international arms trade. This treaty is expected to promote transparency and accountability in the arms trade. This is not new! Keep reading →