Federal CISOs appear to trust technology more than Congress

The results of the recently released (ISC)2 sponsored report, The 2010 State of Cybersecurity from the Federal CISO’s Perspective, suggest a pervasive distrust of U.S. legislators by federal Chief Information Security Officers, based in large part…

Senate sees exponential rise in computer attacks, might be time to rethink security posture, not just spend more to respond

In comments justifying a requested $15 million operating budget increase for fiscal 2011, the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms stressed the need to improve computer security in the face of an extraordinary rise in security “events,” which reported went…

New ONC Chief Privacy Officer starts with a full plate

When Joy Pritts, the newly appointed Chief Privacy Officer in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, started her job on Monday, she already had a list of pending action items stemming from activities,…

ONC names Joy Pritts as its first Chief Privacy Officer

HHS announced on Wednesday that Joy Pritts has been named the Chief Privacy Officer for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Pritts, a lawyer and Georgetown University professor specializing in health law…

Defense approach to cybersecurity includes greater separation from Internet

Based on details about IT security spending in the publicly available fiscal 2011 budget estimates for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), one area of emphasis for improving cybersecurity for military networks is to reduce their…

It’s good to have a contingency plan for Web site traffic surges

The record snowfall in the Washington, D.C. area since last weekend has been notable for the widespread closings it has caused, and came with an unanticipated side effect for the federal government: the unavailability of its…

Security monitoring essential to attack anticipation, even if the nature of the attack is unclear

Security analysts reported yesterday a noticeable spike in network traffic associated with the Pushdo botnet, whose computers somewhat curiously are sending large numbers of fake SSL connections to lots of high-profile websites, including those of the…