• Revolutionary water treatment system may make coping with disaster easier

    Researchers develop a revolutionary waste-water treatment device which uses little energy, is transportable, scalable, simple to set-up, simple to operate, comes on-line in record time, and can be monitored remotely; new system cleans influent wastewater within twenty-four hours after set-up to discharge levels that exceed the standards established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for municipal wastewater

  • U.S. tech salaries up slightly

    IT workers in the United States will see their pay rise by 1.8 percent in 2010 – but this will not keep up with the expected 2.6 percent inflation for 2010; software developers can expect 2.1 percent increases, operations staff 2.0 percent, server and network staff and system administrators could see 1.9 percent growth, managers 1.7 percent, and executives just 1.3 percent

  • IA certifications improve hiring, promotion, salaries

    It pays to get cybersecurity certification; security skills accounted for 17 percent of base pay in the fourth quarter of 2007, and pay for network security management skills increased by more than 27 percent in 2007; going forward, IT professionals will need to be able to incorporate their security savvy into network, wireless, application, operating system, and other IT areas to best compete

  • Soteria to replace U.K.’s search-and-rescue helicopters

    The U.K. government wants to harmonize search and rescue (SAR) in the United Kingdom and replace current helicopters in operation with a bespoke capability; the government has chosen a helicopter from the Soteria Group which consists of Sikorsky, Thales, CHC Helicopter Corporation, and the Royal Bank of Scotland

  • Group aims to set standard for cloud security

    A new consortium aims to provide a Common Assurance Metric (CAM) that will consist of objective, quantifiable measurements; it will draw from existing standards, which are often industry specific, to provide an international, cross-sector approach

  • New facial authentication system installed at Israel Discount Bank

    A bank installs an advanced facial recognition system to verify the identity of employees and customers who want to go into the vault; the system can identify people in difficult conditions such as dim light; changes, such as sunglasses, beards, moustaches, different hairdos, or a hat do not affect its ability

  • U.S. losing ground in the global defense industry

    The U.S. global dominance of the defense industry is eroding; Russia and China encroach on formerly assured markets, while South Korea, Australia, Pakistan, and India will emerge as strong competitors in the industry

  • A nuclear Iran may be good for U.S. defense industry

    A defense expert says that the emergence of a nuclear-armed Iran will lead to growth in exports of American weapons systems, training, and advice to U.S. Middle Eastern allies; this would give the American defense industry a needed shot in the arm; Boeing has been making noise about shifting out of the defense industry, which would mean lost American jobs and would also put the United States in a difficult position should it be threatened by a rising military power like China; “a nuclear Iran could forestall such a catastrophe”

  • Aging infrastructure poses economic, security risks

    The World Bank says global infrastructure investment needs will be $35 trillion over the next twenty years; in the United States, a leading engineers group estimates that $2.2 trillion is needed over the next five years; the group gave U.S. critical infrastructure a D grade in 2009

  • NAS: selling vast federal helium reserves is a mistake

    Helium is used in airships, space rockets, nuclear missiles, IT hardware, enormous magnetic particle cannon dimension portals, MRI brain probes, and deep-diving breathing gases; U.S. annual helium use amounts to 650 million cubic feet; in the U.S. federal helium reserve in Texas, though., more than 35 billion cubic feet are stored; Congress wants this vast amount sold by 2015, scientists say it is a bad idea

  • China finds 170 more tons of tainted milk powder

    Chinese dairies were found to add the industrial chemical melamine, which is high in nitrogen, to watered-down milk to make it appear protein-rich in quality tests that measure nitrogen; many children who drank the milk died or were sickened; rather than destroy the tainted milk, some dairies merely repackaged it

  • Robust homeland security market in 2010

    The homeland security market has grown by 12 percent in the last year, and the trend will continue in 2010; homeland security budgets in the government and public sectors around the world continue to grow despite economic downturn, budget cuts, and belt tightening; in the United States, the proposed 2011 DHS budget will see an increase of nearly 3 percent, and the homeland security portion of the Department of Defense’s budget will see an increase as well; the 2010 business outlook for homeland security products and services remains strong, buoyed by the increased security threats; organization of mass events like the Olympics and commonwealth games; infrastructure modernization programs in different countries; protection of critical infrastructure; and Border protection

  • Utilities to bolster smart grid cybersecurity

    Annual spending on cybersecurity by electric utilities will triple by 2015, driven by investment in equipment protection and configuration management; between 2010 and 2015, Utility companies will invest more than $21 billion on cybersecurity

  • Waterfall receives U.S. patent for SCADA solution

    SCADA, or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, is used, among other things, to monitor and control the U.S. critical infrastructure assets and facilities; Waterfall receives a patent for unidirectional security gateways to be used in SCADA

  • Wall Street warning up to cybersecurity stocks

    The Google-China tiff – coming on the heels of more and more revelations about China’s sustained, sophisticated cyberattacks against Western government organizations, private companies, and critical infrastructure assets – has benefited cybersecurity companies; worldwide spending on tech security rose 6 percent to $26 billion in 2009, and is expected to grow 9 percent to $28.3 billion this year; this contrasts with information-technology spending as a whole, which declined 4.5 percent in 2009 and may rise 3 percent, to $1.5 trillion, in 2010; private cybersecurity firms with strong balance sheets and good growth prospects that might be viewed as viable candidates to float an initial public stock offering include Sophos, Barracuda Networks, Qualys, Proofpoint, and Tripwire