• H1N1-induced work-from-home may clog Internet

    Telecommuting is a good idea — up to a point; if, as a result of a pandemic, too many people decide to work from home, this could threaten to overwhelm the Internet, rendering it useless as a way for communicating and conducting transactions vital to public safety and the economy

  • The brief

    Vetting a chip with a hidden agenda is not easy, and chip makers cannot afford to test every chip; also, today only Intel and a few other companies still design and manufacture all their own chips in their own fabrication plants; other chip designers — including LSI Corp. and, most recently, Sony — have gone “fabless,” outsourcing their manufacturing to off-shore facilities known as foundries

  • US CERT: BlackBerry app may be spying on you

    A new BlackBerry application has the ability to turn their smartphone into a surveillance tool

  • The brief

    Smart grid technologies may themselves introduce new problems, such as increasing the vulnerability to cyber attack, as power grid resources become increasingly linked to the Internet

  • DHS to boost cybersecurity spending in 2010

    Of the $43 billion DHS 2010 budget, about $397 million is aimed at addressing cybersecurity issues; the amount is $84 million, or about 27 percent, higher than the $313 million that was allocated for information security spending in 2009

  • Vulnerability identified in Amazon's cloud computing

    Researchers show that it is possible to find would-be victims within cloud hardware; cloud technologies use virtual machines — remote versions of traditional onsite computer systems; the number of these virtual machines can be expanded or contracted on the fly to meet demand, creating tremendous efficiencies — but the actual computing is performed within one or more physical data centers, creating troubling vulnerabilities

  • How credible -- and serious -- is the cyber threat the U.S. faces?

    New report examines recent cyber attacks on South Korea and asks whether whether the attacks constituted an act of war and whether they could have been the work of a terrorist group; the answer is no on both counts; the U.S. dependence on digital technology makes it somewhat more vulnerable to cyber attacks than other nations,

  • The brief

    General IT spending by the U.S. government will increase by 3.5 percent a year between 2009 and 2014; during the same time, U.S. government spending on cybersecurity will grow at a compound rate of 8.1 percent a year, and spending on vendor-supplied information security products and services will increase from $7.9 billion in 2009 to $11.7 billion

  • Raytheon buys BBN for $350 million

    The latest example of traditional defense contractors expanding into the information systems sector is Raytheon’s acquisition of Massachusetts-based BBN, the company which put the “@” in e-mail addresses

  • NSA to build $1.5 billion cybersecurity center near Salt Lake City

    Facility will support Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; one goal of the new center will be to help federal agencies reduce government exposure to Internet-based threats by reducing and consolidating the number of external Internet connections across government

  • Tech projects to receive big chunk of second wave of stimulus spending

    Information technology projects will receive significant funds, implementation director says;

  • New report says U.S. Air Force should prepare for cyberwar

    New Rand Corp. report argues that the U.S. military branches must treat cyberwar as another emerging field of battle — one that both amplifies the threat of physical combat and presents new tactical challenges unfamiliar to everyone, not just the armed forces

  • China bolsters its information warfare capabilities

    One of the chief strategies driving the process of modernization (known in China as “informatization”) in the PLA is the coordinated use of CNO, electronic warfare (EW), and kinetic strikes designed to
    strike an enemy’s networked information systems, creating “blind spots” that PLA forces could exploit at predetermined times or as the tactical situation warranted

  • Robust hierarchical metropolitan quantum cryptography network

    The security of a majority of classical cryptography is based on the complexity of the cipher algorithms and the development of distributed computing and specific hacking chips; this may no longer be sufficient, as quantum computing has become a serious threat to classical cryptography; the solution: quantum encryption

  • iPhones, social networking add to IT security woes

    The security staff at private and government organizations have new security problems to contend with: smartphones and social networking