Personal identity verification cards required for all federal employees and contractors will now be easier to use and more secure thanks to new draft standards just released by National Institute of Standards and Technology.
The changes incorporate the latest round of comments and revisions aimed at updating the original 2005 standard. “In 2011, we had our first draft,” said Hildegard Ferraiolo, a computer scientist with NIST. “We got about 1200 comments.” Keep reading →
Imagine a real-life version of Harry Potter’s magical Marauder’s Map, which showed the location of everyone prowling throughout Hogwarts castle. That’s what startup Xandem is building: a new kind of all-seeing motion-detection system that’s poised to shake up the security market.
There are many different ways to track motion, but most commercial systems rely on optical beams that require uninterrupted sight lines. Heat-sensing infrared systems don’t have that weakness, but they’re prone to false alarms and can be blocked by anything that insulates body heat. Keep reading →
Most federal agencies indicate having above-average IT programs for enabling telework and mobility and expect mobile device use to increase 20 percent by next year, according to a report released this week.
The report, released by the Telework Exchange, offers a snapshot of where federal agencies stand on enabling remote workers, and delivers a forecast for mobile IT investments. Keep reading →
The TechAmerica Foundation, which has helped define cloud computing and IT policy discussions in the public sector, announced a new leader today.
Jennifer A. Kerber, considered an expert in technology policy, was named by the Foundation’s board to be the organization’s new president. Keep reading →
Throughout my years in government, I engaged in many discussions regarding the convergence of information and physical security assets. While the “why-fix-it-if-it-ain’t-broke?” argument advocating the effectiveness of maintaining the separation of logical and physical security still stands strong in some circles, there is no doubt that convergence has become a growing fad.
At (ISC)2, we often poll our members on topics that represent a potential impact on the information security profession. Just prior to our recent (ISC)2 Security Congress, co-located with ASIS International’s 57th Annual Conference & Exhibits,we took the opportunity to poll our members on the integration of traditional and information security and discovered that many hold to the belief that information security and physical security should not be separate but equal and complimentary entities. Keep reading →
The effort to modernize America’s electric grid is well underway, with nearly $8 billion in federal funding since 2009 and states across the country hastening to deploy everything from electronic smart meters for homes to regional sensors capable of detecting and responding to power outages.
But major privacy and security problems for the smart grid effort could be on the horizon and present a host of challenges to federal agencies, according to multiple smart grid technology and policy experts. Keep reading →