It’s late Monday morning when your computer security department notices that a suspicious message has been emailed to most of the email addresses at your company. It contains a malicious PDF that exploits a new vulnerability that came out over the weekend. The patch hasn’t been applied to the company workstations yet, and it’s too little, too late by the time the email goes out telling everyone not to click on the links.

By the time inboxes are scrubbed and most of the infections have been catalogued it’s clear that this is going to be a security nightmare, since a few dozen machines have been compromised. The attack will take a week or more to fix as desktops are reloaded, servers are checked for more intrusions, and any data losses are reported to the proper authorities.

This is how computer security has been operating at most corporations for a decade. Now enter the world of Secure Configuration and Change Management, or SCCM. SCCM can take the infection turnaround time from days and weeks to minutes or hours, and one of the products leading the charge is Triumfant.

Triumfant’s Configuration and Change Management Tool is an almost completely self-sufficent heuristic scanning software algorithm that manages to neatly sidestep some of the problems with traditional heuristic detection using a combination of patented intellectual property and a gradually changing baseline scanner that is able to move with an IT environment instead of against it.

In a Triumfant environment, baseline behaviors are scanned in groups weekly. These weekly scans are then compared against nightly aggregations of endpoint scans. The nightly aggregations are in turn made up of changes tracked by the user-agent on the endpoint. By comparing gradual baselines within user-defined groups, Triumfant is better able to understand what is and isn’t anomalous, thereby eliminating false positives and negatives.

How are anomalies detected?

The agent on the endpoint hashes all of the files on the hard disk with a cryptographic algorithm, generating a fingerprint for each file. If a file is changed, then the hash will change, signaling a need to compare the old and new versions. The endpoint agent then performs change detection sweeps, comparing hashes of older scans against the MD5 hashes of the current scan. When something changes, a flag is raised and an entry is made in a local change database. The agent also scans a list of over 3000 metrics (such as registry settings) that determine the behavior of the computer.

Every minute, the client makes a connection request to the Triumfant server. If the server responds with a request for the list of recent changes (which it does by default every night) the list is uploaded. All databases and lists are encrypted and signed.

When a rouge application, malware, or an unauthorized user make changes in the system registry, adds files to the hard drive, or modifies critical files in system directories, the endpoint client detects these changes and adds them to a behavior profile. If the behavior is deemed to be malicious, Triumfant flags it as a rouge application and gathers the related system events and changes up into a single, coherent event and prepares them for reversal in remediation. No white- or black-listing is used in this technique, meaning that the server does not need to be constantly updated with new profiles or lists, other than Microsoft windows update signatures, which are used to help determine the patch status of a machine.

Remediation:

Once an undesirable change or application has been discovered, and cataloged, it is presented to an administrator via the Triumfant web interface. The web interface is a highly customisable AJAX application that allows for the creation of new views, reports with charts and graphics, users with different groups and permissions, and the ability to remediate issues with only a few simple clicks.

Simply click on the problem, then click on the remediation button in the left-hand corner. The remediation will be performed automatically by the tool, then put into the list of remediated issues automatically. If for some reason the remediation cant be performed, then it is placed in the “unsuccessful remediation” category.  Unsuccessful remediations are not commonplace.  Even if important system files are deleted or corrupted, computers in the same group are able to copy files for other group members to use, provided that the hash values matched before corruption or deletion.

Taking it further:

Triumfant has extrapolated on their heuristic detection and automatic remedition because the scanning technology behind it can do so much more. Triumfant scans over 3000 parameters for use in their tool, and it collects this data inside of a large, highly-opimised database, allowing it to be easily used for other applications, such as compliance testing.

Inside of the Triumfant server tool, administrators can import SCAP files to use as templates in compliance testing. Once Triumfant has scanned it’s member computers and determined that they are outside of compliance, the template will be used to build remediations against whatever parameters are out of alignment with the SCAP specifications.

Triumfant can also take the data from its database and insert it into a variety of third-party applications with which it has integration, including ePO and the Remedy ticketing system for high cohesion with existing software. Triumfant has custom-built integration for custom ticketing and tracking systems as well.

Past and Present:

Due to the problems associated with heuristic detection, most CCM software has not seen deep market penetration. Triumfant’s tool has been around for some time, having been fire tested at the pentagon for almost 4 years now, while the company has been around since 2002.

In the next few months, Triumfant will be debuting an updated version of their tool that is able to perform all of it’s functions on Macs as well as Windows computers. By the end of the year a Unix or Unix-variant (Linux, BSD, Solaris) should be out, followed by smartphone variations.

Tools such as Triumfant may very well become the future of computer security configuration management over the next few years. Tools like those provided by Triumfant offer ease of use without sacrificing security, bringing thousand-system compliance requirements into the reach of even small IT security departments. It’s ability to remediate nasty infections (like rootkits) give it a leg up on many anti-virus vendors which must release signatures, patches, and fixes and which will forever lag behind heuristic detection technology.

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Big Data Challenges Driving DoD Research Agenda

The Secretary of Defense signed a memorandum on 19 April 2011 which articulates the Science and Technology (S&T) priorities for the Department of Defense (DoD). This memo flows from extensive planning including reviews of all defense missions and architectures to support those missions. The result: seven S&T priorities have been identified for strategic investment.

These seven priorities are:

(1) Data to Decisions - science and applications to reduce the cycle time and manpower requirements for analysis and use of large data sets.

(2) Engineered Resilient Systems - engineering concepts, science, and design tools to protect against malicious compromise of weapon systems and to develop agile manufacturing for trusted and assured defense systems.

(3) Cyber Science and Technology - science and technology for efficient, effective cyber capabilities across the spectrum of joint operations.

(4) Electronic Warfare / Electronic Protection - new concepts and technology to protect systems and extend capabilities across the electro-magnetic spectrum.

(5) Counter Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) - advances in DoD’s ability to locate, secure, monitor, tag, track, interdict, eliminate and attribute WMD weapons and materials.

(6) Autonomy - science and technology to achieve autonomous systems that reliably and safely accomplish complex tasks, in all environments.

(7) Human Systems - science and technology to enhance human-machine interfaces to increase productivity and effectiveness across a broad range of missions

The CTOvision blog will use these seven priorities to continue to inform our writing and analysis. We have already been focusing on Big Data topics that are directly relevant to all of these S&T areas and will continue to do so. Several of these topics are also closely related to Cyber Security, which has long been a focus area of this site.

We have a few immediate recommendations that flow from this memo:

• If you oversee technology activities at an integrator serving in the DoD market, this memo should help you build your roadmap of R&D efforts. The Pentagon is also building investment roadmaps but the R&D spending you can influence in your company may generate capabilities that accelerate DoD capabilities faster and may result in significant enhancements to the nation’s defense capabilities.
• If you serve DoD by providing solutions, you should immediately invest time in learning and implementing solutions based on the stack of capabilities in the Hadoop Framework. For some ideas on how see Common Hadoopable Problems.
• You will find continued articulation of use cases for Big Data, including use cases that flow from this DoD S&T agenda, in the Government Big Data Newsletter. Please sign up to receive this letter and stay in tune with these mission needs.
• Learn more about how you can reduce the cycle time and manpower requirements for the analysis of and use of large data sets by tapping into the wealth of free information at Cloudera.

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• Configuring Your Enterprise Hardware to NIST Standards (ctovision.com)

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What is Hadoop?

Hadoop is a collection of software originally spawned from the Apache Nutch project (Read a little more of its history HERE that is now its own project within the Apache Foundation. Its goal is to provide a highly redundant, self-repairing cloud of computers that can fail out and still be robust, fast, and efficient. To accomplish this goal, it leverages several pieces of software at its most basic installation (there are other distributions of Hadoop which can contain modified or extra software). The entire purpose of the software is to perform tasks that would normally crush computing clusters by breaking apart a question, distributing it, solving the, and then returning an answer — all while using throwaway hardware that is allowed to fail out, be replaced, or simply drop from the node network at any time. How does it do this? It uses Mapreduce, Zookeeper, and the Hadoop Distributed File System. Lets find out a little about how they work together to make some of the worlds best distributed computing software.

Mapreduce

Mapreduce is a software framework designed and patented by Google which allows applications written in many different languages to pass operations into the framework to be broken down into component operations, distributed across a cluster, and then reassemble and return an answer to the application.

“Mapping” is the act of de-constructing an operation into different parts for consumption by multiple computers in a distributed system.

“Reducing” is when the operation parts are received from the cluster systems and built into a single answer.

HDFS–Hadoop Distributed File System

The HDFS is a highly redundant filesystem that sits on top of the filesystem of the host computer. The HDFS has two different nodes in the filesystem — namenodes and datanodes. The namenode is a control node and the datanodes act as storage nodes on the filesystem. Inside the filesystem, the namenode has “rack-awareness” of the datanodes, meaning that it knows where each datanode is and attempts to use this information to reduce communication over the backbone. In fact, jobs will execute on the same rack first, or, failing that, on the same switch.

Nodes, Nodes, Nodes:

Namenodes

Namenodes are the master nodes that store the metadata of the filesystem and control the behaviour of the filesystem. This control is exerted over replication, deletion, and creation of files on the datanodes. This means that if the namenode detects that one file is being requested over another file, it will instruct the datanodes to replicate the more-needed file more often to increase availability. Namenodes (and mapreduce) also structure the filesystem (and jobs in the case of mapreduce) in an efficient, rack-aware manner to decrease the amount of traffic running on the backbone of the datacenter. Replication first goes within the same rack/network switch. Namenodes also perform access control for users and groups.

Secondary namenodes can also be deployed (usually on a separate computer) to take snapshots of the filesystem and the journal of changes to the filesystem. Like many database systems, hadoop uses a journaling filesystem, which means that changes are logged to a file before being applied to the file system to allow recovery in the event of failure. The secondary namenode decreases the amount of time it takes to recover because it keeps more up-to-date snapshots and a shorter change log to be applied on restart than the primary namenode. In short, its a form backup that makes the system faster in the event that it must be restarted.

Datanodes

Datanodes store the data and perform replication, deletion, and creation of files as instructed by the namenode. They make and read or write operations to existing files without explicit input from the namenode in order to carry out assigned tasks from mapreduce. Each datanode has a rack id in order to route traffic around the filesystem in an efficient manner.

ZooKeeper

Zookeeper is a distributed coordination service for distributed applications. It performs configuration management, provides a naming service, does leader election (selecting nodes to organize a task), Synchronization, and notifications. Basically this service keeps all of the nodes in line, working together, and disseminates this information using a distributed model.

Learn more at CTOlabs.com.

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Every time someone mentions switching to Linux at home or using it at work, I eventually get asked “But what about my <insert windows application here>.  Will it work on Linux too?”

Short answer: No.
Long Answer: Depends.

A fair amount of the software that users are familiar with — like Microsoft Office — have counterparts that are Open-Source.  Microsoft Office’s free doppelganger is Open Office, a program formerly maintained by Sun (now owned by Oracle).  But of course there are some aesthetic changes and a bit of a learning curve.

So some of our software is available in the form of other free applications, but what if you have stubborn users, absolutely need a feature, or have a custom-built application that runs on Windows like restaurant or Point of Sale software?

Well, unfortunately Windows and Linux executables are not compatible.  Why? Because some programs in Windows make use of Microsoft software built into the Windows kernel and it’s accompanying proprietary software libraries (DLL files).  Imagine if a Windows program tried to access the registry on Linux — it certainly wouldn’t work.  Now imagine the program is trying to use Windows graphics to draw a prompt box on a Linux OS; The code isn’t there and it just won’t work.

This is where Wine comes in.

Wine is an acronym for Wine Is Not an Emulator.  The acronym is recursive in typical UNIX tongue-in-cheek geek humour.  Despite the playful name, Wine is a seriously robust tool and is one of the best ways to get Windows applications working inside of any Linux distribution.

This is because the Wine project has a collection of black-box engineered Windows libraries and code that Windows executables hook into.  These DLL’s contain the code that Windows programs rely on when they want to do something as simple as display a new message box or make use of the hard drive, system hardware, or talk to the network.  Some libraries are also used for drawing graphics for games (namely DirectX) and more.

Wine provides an environment that allows the Windows executables to get the code they need to perform their functions on Linux.  It doesn’t emulate Windows as much as it translates Windows API and library calls into Linux API and library calls.  In this way, Wine acts more like middleware than an emulation or virtualization environment.  In fact, Wine describes their software model as a compatibility layer.

So Wine makes Windows applications compatible with Linux?

Yes, but this is way more complicated than it sounds (and it sounds complicated), especially when you consider how robust some Windows applications are, and the roundabout methods that the Wine development team has to use to avoid legal repercussions from Microsoft.  This complexity means that Windows executables experience different levels of functionality as the various functions that Windows provides applications are re-created in Wine.  This varying level of functionality has facilitated the creation a Wine application database, http://appdb.winehq.org/.

AppDB crowdsources application testing inside of Wine for various Wine versions and Linux flavors (the most popular being Ubuntu or Debian, which I highly recommend you use if you are trying to run Windows applications over Linux).  Applications in the Wine database are rated and assigned a value based on how usable the program is.  Applications that work flawlessly are “Platinum”, whereas applications that crash or flat-out don’t work are “Garbage”.  A lot of popular programs are rated platinum or gold, including World of Warcraft (Platinum), most of the Windows Office 2007 suite (gold except for Outlook 2007), and many Valve games on the Steam platform (TF2, Half-life).  These applications are frequently quoted to me as reasons why users will not switch from Windows even if they dislike it or find it difficult to afford, but with Wine running on Linux, it shouldn’t be much of a switch at all!

So how do we get the more difficult Wine applications to work? I need application X, Y, or Z and it’s got long instructions about how to configure Wine.

Well this is where the tricky part comes in.  Wine has the ability to be tuned for applications for improved performance.  I recommend looking on AppDB and attempting to find instructions on forums for running whatever particular application it is you wish to run if it doesn’t run out of the box.  Don’t give up on it just because it didn’t start up the first time.  There are also a few important tools that can help you get applications running.

Winetools:

http://www.von-thadden.de/Joachim/WineTools/
Winetools can help you get more than 90 Windows applications working within Wine by helping you to download and install the necessary additional software that some applications require but are not always advertised.  It’s the first step in getting many harder-to-install applications to work inside of the Wine environment because it downloads Windows fonts and allows easier customization.  Read what Wine has to say about it here.

Plays On Linux:

Plays on Linux allows users another Wine environment to install software in — more specifically game software.  It allows easier tweaking based around getting games like team fortress 2 or fallout 2 to install correctly and work better.  I’d recommend it for any gamers looking to make the switch to Linux because of the scripts that automate game installs for many popular games.

I’m on board, but what about support?

Wine has several companies that use its code-base and provide support to users:

http://www.transgaming.com/ (Has more game copy protection support than mainstream Wine but is developed separately)
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/
http://www.bordeauxgroup.com/

Bordeaux supports Microsoft Office applications, Adobe applications, Internet Explorer and “Consumer Video Games” out of the box.  It’s worth checking out if you can’t afford the money for a Windows License and still need to run a Windows executable.

Oh, and Wine runs on Mac’s too.  If you use your Mac for gaming, it could be a helpful tool for getting those older games with no Mac releases that aren’t already on Steam.

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Code for America is a great project with an exciting mission.  They exist to help bring programming and technical talent, especially web2.0 talent, to the issues and challenges facing city governments.

You are no doubt aware that cities are under great financial pressure.  And we citizens of cities are as well, which means the odds of significant new IT money for most cities is really scant.  It is time to look for new ways to empower our cities with abilities to serve citizens, and Code for America is one of the most positive things I have seen happening on this front.

Here is more info from the Code for America site:

Cities are under greater pressure than ever, struggling with budget cuts and outdated technology. What if, instead of cutting services or raising taxes, cities could leverage the power of the web to become more efficient, transparent, and participatory? What if, the professional talent in the tech industry went to work innovating the public sector? What if City Hall looked more like a start up?

It’s time to stop wondering, and start coding. It’s time for you to make it happen.

A short video is embedded below.  It features some heroes of the web2.0/gov2.0 movement, including the founder of Code For America, Jennifer Pahlka plus a few other supporters (she has lined up some real champions, check out the video for some of the exciting folks on her team).  Please watch it for more context, and then consider ways you can help this effort out.  Even if you are not a coder there are things you can do, and I offer a few suggestions after the video.

Some ways to help:

1) Make a donation. These guys have a huge mission and are doing it on a tight budget.

2) Spread the word. Point others to their site and ask your friends to spread word to their friends.

3) Help recruit Code for America Fellows.  The CfA fellowship program offers tremendous benefits for those accepted into the program including:

• Gov 2.0 Training. You will start with a crash course in municipal government and gain b practical understanding of the vital intersection of politics and technology.
• Professional Development. The biggest names in the web industry and the Gov 2.0 movement will provide you unparalleled networking, mentoring, and support.
• Alumni Connections. Working closely with other talented individuals, you will develop lasting professional relationships in a face-paced, startup atmosphere.
• Employer Partnerships. Multiple leading internet companies have already pledged to guarantee interviews for a full-time position after your CfA experience.

Please help spread the word.

Don Adcock is the executive director of the Information Technology Agency  (ITA) of the US Army.  The ITA is the executive agent for many OSD IT functions in the DC area and is a group which must operate a highly functioning IT enterprise at a very high level of availability.

Don recently conducted an interview on Fed News Radio where he provided some insights into how the Army ITA is addressing its challenges and how their business model is changing.  If you are an enterprise technologist in any enterprise, federal or not, large or small, I would recommend you listen to Don’s interview.  To me it hits on several items any CIO, CTO or other IT leader should track.

I’m not talking about the specific business model.  Although that is important as well.  I’m talking about the power of vision and the power of being able to articulate that vision in a clear, compelling way.  These are classic leadership qualities good to see in any field, but incredibly important in IT.

As for the ITA, Don took over there in March 2010 and now leads the group in its mission.  They provide a reliable, secure, cost-efficient IT services to the DoD community inside the national capital region (the beltway).  They deliver a comprehensive suite of tools and capabilities.   ITA supports the Pentagon and many other facilities in the area. They are the “single agency manager” for this function. Don has the tough job of having to serve a broad community of stakeholders, including reps from every service and agency in the DC area.   They provide storage, COOP, telecommunications, telephone services, e-mail, networks, messaging, backup, desktops, engineering systems development and design, Information Assurance, and of course O&M on all that.

Right now ITA is in the middle of a transformation. They are changing it from a functionally organized business model to an enterprise model to align more with service delivery.  Over the next 6 months Don’s goals are to ensure this transition is complete and then develop a program to continue to optimize.

You can find out more about Don and the ITA at:

http://www.oaa.army.mil

And listen to the Fed News Radio interview at:

http://www.federalnewsradio.com/index.php?nid=42&sid=1550881

And for those with an ability to contribute to the ITA mission, please consider attending the ITA industry day of 15 June 2010.  For more on that see:

https://secureapp2.hqda.pentagon.mil/dtsw_cms/customcf/ita/

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Most enterprise CTOs are very interested in the “cloud” and ways to tap into cloud-based resources.   An interesting aspect of this discussion has been how to access the cloud while on the move.   Today’s cellular networks support that access today, and future enhancements are making that support even better and much much faster.

How much faster? I’ll try to put that in context in this post.

Early 3G networks had a download speed of 384kbits per second and an upload speed of 192Kbits per second.  The wireless router you might have in your home, by contrast, might have a speed of 54Mbits per second.  So, about 140 times faster.

But the 3G networks in place today use new transmission algorithms that enable much faster throughput.  Here is a little more context from vendor pages:.

Verizon asserts their broadband access, based on CDMA2000 1x EVDO (Code Division Multiple Access Evolution-Data Only) provides download speeds of up to 1.4Mbits/s and uploads of up to 800kbits/s.

AT&T is leveraging its GPRS technology called EDGE to deliver higher speeds than Verizon’s.  AT&T’s EDGE delivers speeds of around 1.7Mbits/s and upload of around 1.2Mbits/s.  AT&T also claims that their new protocols (HSDPA/UMTS, for High Speed Downlink Packet Access/Universal Mobile Telephone System) makes it possible to make use of more services and credit this with their ability to let you talk and use the Internet at the same time.

Sprint asserts that its broadband cards delivery 350-500kbps but then say you might get a peak of 3.1Mbps.  I wonder if or how often that happens.  Sprint also claims that they “lead the way with 4G” and in many ways they seem to be the pioneers here, but they might be defining that term differently than others.  Clearly their offering of EVO is revolutionary, it is an incredible device (look for reviews elsewhere on our site).  Sprint’s system, which is fast at an advertised .5 to 1.5 Mbps uplink (and peak uplinks at up to 5 Mbps (another source said peak can be 12 Mbps)), is very fast but still no where near the speed I think of when I think 4G.

Really 4G refers to the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards.  I consider 4G to be IP-packet-switched networks operating at gigabit speed for access.  Most in the field consider WiMAX and LTE (Long term evolution cell) as pre-4G or sometimes 3.5G.

What’s coming next:

A key emerging protocol is HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access).  HSDPA is sometimes called 3.5G.  This protocol is in the HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) family and allows download of up to 14.4Mbits/s download and 5.8Mbits/s upload.   Now this is getting interesting.

HSPA+ allows speeds of up to 42Mbits/s.  This is almost what you would expect to see in your home wireless LAN.  The next step is a project called Long Term Evolution.  This LTE will start with providing 150Mbits/s to handheld devices and soon thereafter expect protocols and algorithms to increase that up to 1gig of bits per second to your mobile device.

When will these new protocols and speeds be available to consumers?  The answer is, the best roadmaps I have seen are all tightly held insider views, but if you look at what is being rolled out right now we should expect a continuing stream of announcements that brings the timing of these new protocols more into focus.   Public information show many vendors moving to the first version of LTE by 2011.  Sprint’s very fast WiMax and cell is available in many urban areas today and will hopefully spread fast.

So, brace yourself for the innovation that will drive in the devices that connect to the cloud through cellular.

For more on 4G I recommend wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G

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Carahsoft is a unique, trusted firm that helps government find and rapidly acquire the right technologies and helps high tech firms successfully interact with government (which has famously onerous processes for businesses that want to serve the federal mission).  Carahsoft is a client of my firm and one of the things I’m particularly proud about is their sponsorship of venues where government and industry tech leaders can interact together.  One venue of note is a series they coordinate called the Intelligence Community Executive Forum.

This periodic event focuses on executives from the IC and the industry companies around the IC.  Today’s session of the ICEF focused on industry and commercial technologies addressing the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative.

It is hard to capture the content of a venue like this.  Its true value comes from the dynamic interactions and high data rate conversations that take place throughout.  But I thought I should try to provide some gist of what happened so you can determine whether or not you should participate in future venues like this. Give the agenda below a quick glance then I’ll add some additional context:

Agenda:

During breaks several sponsors were providing demos and additional information on their technology including:

A quick gist:

Don Boian of Cyber Command provided great context and a good kickoff to dialog.  Then throughout the event, cyber thought leaders in and out of government discussed the state of current technologies and current mission needs in cyber-focused organizations.  Some of these mission needs are truly enduring.  For example, the need for defense in depth as a strategy and approach vice just point solutions.  But today, defense in depth is not enough.  Adversaries always find a way in and defenders must continuously monitor and prepare for remedial action.  With the incredibly high volumes of data and information around those intrusions new means must be found to gain insights into what is occurring and then determine the appropriate action to take.  This must be done so fast new operational constructs around “dynamic defense” are required.  Defenders require capabilities that can increase the speed of good guy decision-making.  There must be speed in vulnerability detection, speed in intrusion detection, speed in decision-making and speed in execution.  Cyber Command defenders use the phrase “operate at network speeds.”

Another common theme throughout the event was a call for enhanced situational awareness in the cyber domain. The bad news is that call has been made for decades now.  There has been movement in enhancing situational awareness, but nothing yet fills the need.  More work is required.

Another theme was the need to enable humans to interact with data in far better, far faster ways.  Cyber data needs to be rapidly run through automated tools that can enable not just search but discovery using tools like Endeca.

Collaboration for cyber related commands and organization is another area where many enhancements have been made lately.  In a very good trend, it seems most organizations working cyber defense/cyber operations now know of each other and have frequent interactions.  There is more need for enhanced human to human collaboration and even enterprise grade social networking/social media around cyber defense as an aide to bringing the right understanding to situations.  A capability to watch here is Jive.

It is not only network defenders that need collaborative capabilities.  Developers of software and those that lead/manage/interact with them, including users, need ways to collaborate.  The ICEF was treated to an overview of a very positive capability to do that, the DISA led Forge.mil .  In my opinion, the positive disruptions from this activity have just begun, far more goodness will come from this project as more and more developers make use of it.  It is speeding development of new capabilities and is also laying the foundation of what may be the biggest positive improvement in the security and testing environment in years.

The security aspects of Cloud Computing were discussed in detail.  A general statement: If security is engineered into cloud computing capabilities, cloud concepts can significantly enhance the security of enterprises.  However, the reverse is also true.  If security is neglected in cloud constructs it can doom us all!

The ICEF was treated to an interaction with Tony Sager, one of the nation’s greatest thinkers in cyber security. Tony’s ability to express technological concepts in ways we can all understand is always appreciated.  A key conclusion from Tony: we are entering a phase in cyber defense that will require enhanced information management.   Note:  Tony provided us all with context on some very important concepts that all network defenders should be tracking, SCAP, NDV and FDCC.   My personal sense from the interaction was that most in the venue who work closely with security technology new of these constructs, however, it is getting to the point where all IT professionals and all leaders in an out of government need to know these capabilities, even if you are not a security professional.  So, a recommendation:  accept it as your civic duty to study up on SCAP, NVD and FDCC.

Other speakers, including Dr. Ted Kirscher, Chief Architect of the NSA Threat Operations Center, underscored again the need for new means to conduct highspeed assessment of the right data from defensive devices.  Ted, like everyone else who spoke, also ensured we all knew the collaborative nature of the work in front of us all.

For the many people I heard from this was a day well spent, a time to reflect on progress and to think through the next priorities to address.  There are some huge challenges that confront cyber defenders, but with new organizational constructs and new focus being placed on the mission these challenges are certainly achievable.  Some might still look impossible, but hey, like Walt Disney said, “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.”

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Good conferences can really help you get things done.  You connect with people you need to meet, learn new trends, gain insights into customer perspectives and keep improving your own abilities.  But you already know that.  You probably also know that you can go overboard with conferences. You can spend so much time in them it can detract from getting your job done.

So the trick is finding the right events/conferences/meetings to go to.  I list some below I would like to draw your attention to- for me they are the right events for the rest of 2009.  Please consider whether or not these are strategic fits for what you have going on:

SummerOfGov,  16 July.  This is not a conference, it is a social celebration of two key milestones in the history of government 2.0.  We will be celebrating the wrap up of Apps for Democracy “Community Edition” and the one year anniversary of GovLoop.   It would be good to see you there.

Open Government & Innovations Conference (OGI), July 21-22.   The agenda shows some incredible keynotes.  I know many of the people involved in organizing this and they are world class people looking to enhance concepts like open government, innovation, transparency, collaboration and support to the mission of government.

Gov2.0 Summit: The Platform for Change, September 9-10.   This gathering is a summit in every sense of the word.  Some of the most powerful mission and IT thinkers from government, the IT industry and academia are coming together in a venue designed to change the way the government serves.  One look at the agenda and you will see why this gathering is the must attend event of the year.

AFCEA IT Acquisition Solutions, September 9-10.   An incredibly important topic.  The dates coincide with the Gov2.0 summit.  That sort of conference collision is unavoidable, unfortunately.  But the good news is that AFCEA always does a remarkable job of capturing content for online use.

Adobe MAX 2009, October 4-7  Adobe’s annual come together for developers, designers and planners.  I won’t be able to make it, but will be tracking it online.  If you go please keep me in  the loop.

1st Annual Government IT Conference & Expo, October 6.  I’ll be giving the keynote at this first of Sys-con’s new federal series.  This one is focused on cloud computing, with a focus on private clouds and ways to best use clouds in support of the government mission.

Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Green IT Summit, October 6-7.   The intersection of green/virtualization/cloud can put us on a very virtuous spiral that continually builds on itself while inproving computer power and functionality.  This promises to be a good event that will give you real information you can use.

Fall Intelligence Symposium, October 14.  If you work in the national security space please review this agenda.  This conference always sells out.

I should also mention that if you can’t be at one of those conferences you should figure out who to follow on Twitter and what the hashtags for the conference are.  That will give you a sense of what is going on and it will also generate pointer for you to things like blogs people are writing during and after the conference.

If you and I are not already connected on Twitter, find me at http://twitter.com/bobgourley I’ll send out what I can from those events.