Cyber Security

Cyber Security is far more than just protecting data. Security is about protecting the functionality of IT. It involves confidentiality, availability and integrity of resources. This higher order approach to cyber security requires vision, leadership, and actions in dimensions of people, process and technology.

2012 AIIM Conference: Managing Information in the Social, Local, and Mobile Era

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Every year, the AIIM Conference meets to provide excellent keynotes and other speakers. This year our editor, Bob Gourley will be speaking on Big Data. The conference is March 20-22 at the Grand Hyatt in San Francisco. The topic for this year is " Managing Information in the Social, Local, and Mobile Era." Information overload is fast becoming a serious issue for decision makers and analysts alike. This conference will offer success stories from leaders … [Read more...]

Passwords Suck: Learn about and use multi-factor authentication

A Generic Padlock

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 try all of their passwords when told one isn’t working...the list goes on. Passwords are essential to our daily lives … [Read more...]

Technology Titans Refresh: Feb 2012

Feb 1 Mobile

In the past, Bob had been vigorously keeping up with the Titans of the Tech industry (here). These posts should give a picture of how the technology world is moving (and over time, identify trends). We have used market capitalization as our key indicator, but that’s just for ranking purposes. We intend to continue our Tech Titans list in 2012, and the first post will be an update of his old tech titans list. That said, we will begin to break them into … [Read more...]

NSF releases Cloud Computing Report

NSF's guidance on Cloud Computing will inform research dollars in the near future

The National Science Foundation released their report on cloud computing. It can be found here. The intent of this report is to provide information that guides funding programs. The NSF used NIST's guidance on cloud computing to inform their research and decision making. This report will be instrumental in informing Federal decision makers and cloud investment. It is important to pay attention to such documents as they can help businesses align with … [Read more...]

An Analysis of A NASA Dbase Hack-and-Dump

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[Editor's note: this analysis predates any official announcements by NASA] 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.  What follows is a … [Read more...]

Recent study finds Apple iOS more crash-prone than Android

The iOS vs Android battle rages on - and Apple is losing talking points

This latest news about the two major mobile operating systems does not look good for Apple.  A new report, created by the mobile analysis company Crittercism, provides a very good (and surprising) analysis of mobile operating system stability In short, Apple's most recent release, 5.0.1, has almost 34% of all iOS crashes, and 28.6% of total crashes recorded. While this is just one study, this is awful news for Apple if it proves repeatable. Android is … [Read more...]

Anup Ghosh on Cybersecurity in 2012: Let’s break the security insanity cycle

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Editor's note: the post below by Anup Ghosh first appeared on the Invincea blog and is republished here with the author's permission. bg Prediction 2012: Hackers Will Find New Fertile Ground to Pharm Posted by Anup Ghosh on November 29, 2011 Invincea is on record that the year 2011 will go down as the year the fundamental underpinnings of Internet security fell. In fact, it is the bloodiest year on record for Internet security. Not only did we … [Read more...]

FDCCI Preparation with Virtual Instruments and Carahsoft

Team up with Carahsoft and Virtual Instruments to prepare for the FDCCI

Last week I attended a Carahsoft webinar with Virtual Instruments' Doug Norton and our very own Bob Gourley. The topic was the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, and what Virtual Instruments can do to help prepare your agency for consolidation. The key capability that Virtual Instruments brings to the table is the ability to identify and create real metrics for your data center and across the SAN. VI uses fibre channel technologies to copy … [Read more...]

Trust, Enterprise Security, and Autonomous Technology

TechnologyAutonomy

The technology writer Langdon Winner wrote an interesting book 30 years ago that has a lot of relevance to technologists today--especially when thinking about enterprise security. His core idea is one of technological autonomy. As the good folks at Cyborgology define it: Technological autonomy is a shorthand way of expressing the idea that our technologies and technological systems have become so ubiquitous, so intertwined, and so powerful that they are … [Read more...]

Catbird’s vSecurity 5.0

Catbird

While virtualization offers many benefits to enterprise such as lower costs and greater flexibility, it also creates new challenges. One of the greatest concerns with switching over to virtualized infrastructure, espeically in government, is security and compliance in a complex and dynamic environment which legacy software can no longer handle. Catbird offers automated security solutions tailored to virtualized data centers and has recently unveilled the … [Read more...]