• Obama to name Howard Schmidt as cybersecurity coordinator

    Howard Schmidt chosen as the White House cybersecurity coordinator; Schmidt, a former Bush White House official, will coordinate cybersecurity policy across the federal government, from the military to civilian agencies; questions remain as to whether his authority will be commensurate with the responsibilities he assumes

  • Prediction for 2010: The coming cloud crash

    Technology maven Mark Anderson predicts a big remote-computing service disaster; “My hunch is that there will never really be a secure cloud,” he says; businesses will view cloud services more suspiciously and consumers will refuse to use them for anything important, he says

  • Michigan in cyber-security partnership with DHS

    Michigan will deploy EINSTEIN 1, the DHS-run cyber security system which all federal agencies are required to use; EINSTEIN 1 automates the collection and analysis of computer network security information from participating agency and government networks to help analysts identify and combat malicious cyber-activity

  • DHS launches virtual cyber job fair

    In October DHS announced it was given the authority to hire 1,000 cyber security professionals during the next three years; late last week the department launched a virtual job fair to begin and recruit these cyber specialists; DHS is looking for applicants with experience in cyber risk and strategic analysis, malware/vulnerability analysis, incident response, exercise and facilitation management, vulnerability detection and assessment, intelligence analysis, and cyber-related infrastructure inderdependency analysis

  • US, Russia begin talks on cyberspace security

    U.S. officials say the Obama administration realized that more nations were developing cyberweapons and that a new approach was needed to blunt an international arms race; the United States also hope to enlist the Russians in the war against cybercrime

  • Cybercriminals begin to exploit the cloud for hacking

    Cloud password cracker is a sign of things to come: cloud computing offers advantages of scale and cost, but its reliance on the Internet makes it vulnerable to hacking; “The cloud is going to offer the serious criminal huge computing resources on tap, which has lots of interesting applications,” says one security expert; “If nothing else, it should change a few threat models”

  • House of Lords hears evidence on risk of cyberterattacks

    The House of Lords hears evidence that the U.K. communication system is vulnerable to cyberattacks; experts advised the Lords that since up to 90 percent of the critical infrastructure on which Europe depends is privately owned and crosses international boundaries, then only co-operative planning between public and private sectors, as well as EU member states, can hope to deal with the risks.

  • Cisco annual information security report highlights risks of social media

    Cisco has released its annual information security report for 2009 and the year-end analysis; the report highlights the impact of social media on network security and the critical role that people — not technology — play in creating opportunities for cybercriminals.

  • Cyberattacks on U.S. military systems rise

    In 2000, there were 1,415 cyber attacks on U.S. military networks; in all of 2008 there were 54,640 malicious cyber incidents targeting DoD systems; in the first six months of 2009 tThere were 43,785 such incidents.

  • How vulnerable is the smart grid?

    The smart grid is a theoretically closed network, but one with an access point at every home, business, and other electrical power user where a smart-grid device is installed; those devices, which essentially put the smarts into the grid, are computers with access to the network; in the same way attackers have found vulnerabilities in every other computer and software system, they will find vulnerabilities in smart-grid devices

  • Industry, academia join hands to solve U.S. most pressing cyber threats

    Northrop Grumman forms cybersecurity research consortium to help secure the U.S. critical infrastructure and counter growing threats; consortium’s members include MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Purdue

  • CERT Australia promotes on network security

    Australia’s Attorney-General’s Department national security resiliency division says CERT Australia would be a two-way clearing house for notifications from local and international authorities, with responsibility for tracking down compromised machines in Australian domains

  • Top 10 information security trends for 2010

    Further adoption of cloud, social media, and virtualization technologies will continue to blur the network parameter; organizations — large and small — should consider a layered, centralized security solution that provides multiple security touch points within the network, rather than around it

  • New report: The line between cybercrime and cyberwar is blurred

    New McAffee cybersecurity report: “International cyber conflict has reached the tipping point where it is no longer just a theory, but a significant threat that nations are already wrestling with behind closed doors. The impact of a cyberwar is almost certain to extend far beyond military networks and touch the globally connected information and communications technology infrastructure upon which so many facets of modern society rely”

  • U.S. Army funds a new discipline: Network Science

    The U.S. Army gives Rensselaer Polytechnic in New York State $16.75 million to launch the Center for Social and Cognitive Networks; the new center will link together top social scientists, neuroscientists, and cognitive scientists with leading physicists, computer scientists, mathematicians, and engineers in the search to uncover, model, understand, and foresee the complex social interactions that take place in today’s society