• U.S. quietly launches protection program against cyber attacks on critical infrastructure

    The administration has quietly launched Perfect Citizen, a digital surveillance project to be run by the NSA; the project’s goal is to detect and detect cyber attacks on private companies and government agencies running critical infrastructure such as the electricity grid, nuclear-power plants, dams, and more; the program would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack — although it would not persistently monitor the whole system

  • GAO: U.S. lacks cybersecurity R&D master plan, leadership, coordination

    GAO says United States does not have prioritized national cybersecurity research and development agenda; “Without a current national cybersecurity R&D agenda, the nation is at risk that agencies and private sector companies may focus on their individual priorities, which may not be the most important national research priorities,” auditors wrote

  • Security tensions at the core of the cloud concept hobble cloud growth

    The cloud model and the notion of data having a specific location are somewhat antithetical: some cloud-service providers attempt to maintain security and availability by locating the data in multiple servers or data centers, or by locating it in an undisclosed data center; cloud-service providers are thus in a tight situation with regard to secrecy about their data centers and security procedures: many of these providers believe that this information must remain secret, but many customers — including giant potential customers such as the U.S. federal government — want to be made aware of such information before signing on with a provider

  • Secureworks World Cup of cyber security finds India the safest nation, U.S. the least safe

    Digitally speaking, the United States is the least cyber-secure country in the world: with 265,700,000 active PCs, there were 441,003,516 attempted cyber attacks, or 1,660 attacks per 1,000 computers; India is the safest digital country in the world, with a mere 52 attacks per 1,000 PCs