Technically News – 3/11

Technically News scans thousands of industry articles to present you with a weekly source of IT news, information, and ideas that impact the public sector.

Symantec CTO: Enterprise Security Still Needs Humans

Cybersecurity software is becoming more complex and automated; however, like we’ve mentioned in the past, cybersecurity is more about the users themselves than ever before. Symantec’s CTO, Steve Trilling, reflects the same sentiment in a video interview recently posted on eSecurity Planet. During the interview, Steve also explains Big Data’s role in cybersecurity and talks about Hadoop, an open source project. Click here to watch the video.

As Data Centers Consolidate, Those Remaining Need to be More Efficient

The Office of Management and Budget expects to save $5 billion by not only closing and consolidating more federal data centers, but making those still in use more efficient. To do this, federal CIO Steven VanRoekel’s office plans to expand PortfolioStat to include their current data center consolidation initiative. PortfolioStat is a program that audits government agencies’ IT budgets to root out waste and inefficiencies. Read this Nextgov article to learn how they plan to do this and the goals they hope to achieve.

Complexity is Cybersecurity’s Real Enemy

Most IT professionals are understandably concerned with international hackers from China and at-home hackers like Anonymous; but are they detracting from the real problem with cybersecurity? NIST’s Federal Information Security Management Act implementation lead, Ron Ross, thinks so, and he points to the cloud for answers. This GCN article reviews Ron’s thoughts and those of John Streufert’s, director of network resilience at the Homeland Security Department, as they both search for an answer to the complexity of cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity Challenges in 2013

Dell Director of Product Management, Dmitriy Ayrapetov, recently wrote his cybersecurity challenges and predictions for this year, and 2013 appears to be the year of more, more, more. He sees increases in exploit kits, mobile cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and cyberattack sophistication. As evidence, Dmitriy points to the 44,000 new malware samples they identify every day, an increase in BYOD adoption, and the huge increase in DDoS attacks, from 1,596,905 in 2011 to 120,321,372 in 2012. Read this Network World article to learn more.

GitHub Hires First Government Liaison

GitHub, one of the nation’s biggest code sharing websites, recently welcomed Benjamin Balter as their first government liaison. To increase their transparency and tap into the innovative open source community, Federal agencies and the White House have begun posting code kits on the site. Benjamin hopes to use his position not only to encourage a stronger relationship between the two communities, but also to influence the very culture of government. Nextgov has a full breakdown of this new role and what it could mean for an “open government.”

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