• NSA: Perfect Citizen program is purely "research and engineering effort"

    Perfect Citizen, a new National Security Agency (NSA) project, would deploy sensors in networks running critical infrastructure such as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants; the sensors would detect intrusion and other unusual activity indicating a cyberattack on U.S. critical infrastructure; NSA spokeswoman says the program is “purely a vulnerabilities-assessment and capabilities-development contract—- This is a research and engineering effort” and “There is no monitoring activity involved, and no sensors are employed in this endeavor”

  • 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

  • U.S. Naval Academy to launch cyber security center

    The building and labs would cost $100 million, with work beginning in 2014; a Baltimore lawmaker who also is chairman of a House subcommittee that deals with technical and tactical intelligence says: “The future of war fighting is cyber security… We [the United States] have been cyber-attacked on a regular basis; our future leaders need to understand cyber security”

  • Industrial espionage puts German companies, jobs at risk

    Companies failing to protect themselves from external attack risk losing their competitive edge; in the information age, the threat of industrial espionage is all too real, with thousands of jobs at stake in Germany

  • Lebanon: alleged Israeli spy had access to "most significant segment" of cell phone network

    Lebanon arrested a high-level employee of one of the two Lebanese mobile phone networks, saying he has been working for Israeli intelligence since 1996; the authorities say he may have planted monitoring devices allowing the Israelis to tap directly into the Alfa network, one of the two major cell phone companies operating in Lebanon

  • A smarter, faster, more controllable cloud

    Different types of cloud applications have different needs; a highly interactive application such as a voice chat program probably needs a high-quality connection; a file-backup service that transfers data in bulk might benefit from the least expensive transit between machines; a proposed system would let cloud developers control the way their data travels across different machines

  • Chase: IE6 "more secure" than Chrome, Opera

    Banking giant Chase said it found the old IE6 to be more secure — and popular — than either Google’s Chrome or Opera; the bank’s online banking services will, therefore, continue to support aging the IE 6 but drop support for Chrome and Opera; also making the cut are Mozilla’s Firefox 2.0 and higher and version 3.0 and higher of Apple’s Safari on the Mac — but not the PC

  • Obama emphasizes identity management

    The Obama administration is planning to promote identity management throughout the government; Howard Schmidt: “The ability to interact with the government in a very secure manner, where privacy and civil liberties are protected and you can only do that with some of the things you look at from an identity management perspective”

  • U.S. government to direct more to cybersecurity

    The three themes undergirding the Obama administration’s multi-billion dollar cybersecurity strategy: first, “tailored trustworthy spaces,” which means creating different security levels for different government and non-government Internet activities; second, “moving targets,” in which the search is for security systems that change constantly to increase uncertainty for hackers; third, “economic incentives,” which involves seeking to find ways to motivate users to adopt cybersecurity defenses

  • Lawmakers to combine cybersecurity bills

    Reforming the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and defining the role of the White House and other agencies are common themes in the many cybersecurity bills now circulating on the Hill

  • Smart Grid cybersecurity market to reach $3.7 billion by 2015

    Spending on security for the smart grid will represent approximately 15 percent of total smart grid capital investment between now and 2015; cumulative investment in the security sector will reach $21 billion between 2010 and 2015, with annual revenue reaching $3.7 billion by 2015; among other incentives, one key condition for smart grid funding awarded last year under the federal stimulus program was that the awardees incorporate strong security into their smart grid initiatives