Tech Update Summary from Blue Mountain Data Systems June 2015

Tech Update Summary
Blue Mountain Data Systems
June 2015

For CTOs, CIOs & CISOs
Follow Blue Mountain Data Systems on Twitter
https://twitter.com/bluemt_data

For CTOs, CIOs & CISOs
Every business day, we publish a Daily Tech Update for Federal & State CTOs ,CIOs & CISOs on the Blue
Mountain Data Systems Blog. We hope you will visit our blog for the latest information.
You can also receive these updates via email. Click here to subscribe.
Here’s the summary of the Daily Tech Updates for June 2015. Hope the information and ideas prove
useful.
Best,
Paul Vesely
President and Principal Architect
Blue Mountain Data Systems Inc.

For the CTO, CIO & CISO
IT MANAGEMENT: Be Popular By Never Denying A User Request. Some user
requests are much more complicated than others and may be difficult to fulfill.
Saying no is not good for business.Here is a technique that gives you a positive
way to respond to any request while allowing the user to ultimately determine
its destiny. Read more
[CIO.COM]
SERVICE MANAGEMENT: Process Frameworks. Public process frameworks are
easily accessible, proven over time, and generally free to use. The most well
known IT management framework is the UK’s Office of Government Commerce’s
(OGC) IT Infrastructure Library, or ITIL. ITIL codifies the concept of IT as a
“service“, or one or more IT systems which enable a business process. Read more
[ITMGR.COM]

APPLICATION SECURITY: How To Get CVSS Right. For anyone dealing with
software vulnerabilities, the CVE and CVSS are often their first stops in finding
out the scope and details, and just about everything else they need to know
about the specific vulnerability. Read more
[IDIGITALTIMES.COM]
SOFTWARE VULNERABILITIES: DARPA Recruits Gamers to Find Software
Vulnerabilities through Online Games. Gamers can help DARPA, the U.S.
military’s research division, to find a fault in a software and kill it by simply
playing one of its free video games. This week, the research agency announced
that five new games will be added in the program. Read more
[CSOONLINE.COM]

CIO CHEATSHEET: 10 Ways To A Great Hybrid Cloud Strategy. How Can IT Help
The Business Stay Competitive? By 2016, more than half of all IT services will be
delivered via cloud, reports the CIO Linkedin Forum. But who is tasked with
being broker, architect, and deployment czar for these services? Read more
[FORBES.COM]
RED FLAGS 7 Warning Signs An Employee Has Gone Rogue. For all the emphasis
on tools and gizmos, IT is still very much about the people who develop and use
said tools and gizmos. Collaboration, mutual respect, passion for the work — all
this and more are essential to a beneficial outcome, whether your IT group is
shipping code, swatting bugs, working with business users, or securing company
systems. Read more
[CSOONLINE.COM]

LEADERSHIP: CIO-CSO Tension Makes Businesses Stronger. The relationship
between the CIO and CSO (or CISO) can be fraught with tension – and that can be
a good thing. Both executives play a critical role in your organization’s C-suite, and
better understanding these sometimes overlapping roles can only make your
business stronger and more secure. Read more
[CIO.COM]
NO-RISK REWARD: Hot New Technologies: Adopt Or Ignore? The CIO Conundrum.
When should you adopt a hot new technology, and when should you hang back?
And how much of a say should your business counterparts have in making that
call? That’s a conundrum that all CIOs face, especially in today’s market, when
new products are introduced on what seems like an hourly basis. Read more
[ENTERPRISERSPROJECT.COM]

PRODUCTIVITY: Microsoft Office 365 Security Updates Revealed. Mobile and
cloud trends are profoundly influencing how people do their jobs, said Vijay
Kumar, Microsoft’s senior product marketing manager, in an interview with
InformationWeek. Delivering improved service capabilities and customer controls
for Office has been a priority, but such changes have to be made with security in
mind, he said. Read more
[INFORMATIONWEEK.COM]
AUTOMATED WORKFORCE: Here’s How Managers Can Be Replaced by Software.
Fortune 500 executives spend a fair amount of time thinking about how
automation and the Internet are changing the nature of employment, but they
rarely wonder how technology will have an impact much closer to home: on their
own jobs. Read more
[HBR.COM]

GOVERNANCE: Don’t Go ‘George Orwell’s 1984′ With Big Data. The term
governance comes across as boring and maybe even a bit oppressive, not unlike
how many people think of actual governments – especially the dystopian
regimes where citizens are stifled by excessive laws and overzealous
enforcement of all those rules. Some data-driven organizations indeed cling to
heavy-handed IT policies that harken the regimented Big Brother–style oversight
George Orwell wrote about in his famous novel, 1984. Read more
[FORBES.COM]
PROCESS MANAGEMENT: Why Red Hat is tackling BPM. In today’s business
environment, as enterprises seek to do more work with limited resources,
orchestrating and planning daily business operations to optimize resources can
be a big challenge. This environment is putting new pressure on developers and
IT, according to a Forrester Consulting survey commissioned by Red Hat.
Read more
[CIO.COM]

WHITEPAPER: Web Application Firewalls Are Worth the Investment for
Enterprises. Firewalls don’t provide sufficient protection for most public-facing
websites or Web applications. Learn how Web App Firewalls help security leaders
better protect data and apps in their organizations. Read more
[CSOONLINE.COM]
BIG DATA: A GOAL FOR CIOs: Invest In Your Change Agents’ Ideas. If CIOs really
want to be successful they need to develop a network of change agents not only
within the IT shop, but across the organization as a whole, says U.S. Federal
Communications Commission CIO, Dr. David A. Bray. Read more
[ENTERPRISERSPROJECT.COM]

RSA WRAP-UP: A Post-RSA Conference Recap. This year’s show seemed bigger,
crowd-wise at least, but smaller when it came to everything else. After the reports
were released, many of the attendees I spoke to while walking around were
focused on the ISACA and (ISC)2 studies about jobs and skills (or the lack thereof)
in InfoSec. Read more
[CSOONLINE.COM]
PARTNERSHIP: CIOs Must Partner With CMOs On Insight Teams. Customer insights
are the new currency in today’s digital world, yet too many companies can’t seem
to produce them quickly enough. What’s the problem? It comes back to a familiar
theme.
Find out more
[CIO.COM]

CDO SUMMIT: Digital Transformation Moves to Back Office Operations. Some
companies equate digital transformation with building mobile apps and
personalizing online interactions. But revamping systems behind the scenes to
share data is becoming more important to improving the front-and-center
customer experience and, consequently, generating more revenue, according to
Jaime Punishill, head of cross-channel customer strategy at financial giant TIAA-
CREF. Read more
[BLOGS.WSJ.COM]
THREAT-LEVEL MIDNIGHT: BYOD Leading To Increasingly Risky Behavior Among
Employees. Businesses today are approaching their own “Threat Level Midnight,”
but this threat doesn’t come from a single, evil super villain. Rather, it comes
primarily from the internal employees in an organization and their habits when
using their personal mobile devices. Read more
[NETWORKWORLD.COM]

RETENTION STRATEGY: 6 Reasons To Help Your Best People Leave. Why should
you actively work to help your best direct reports find better jobs? Isn’t your job
as a manager to retain your best people? Yes and no. Here are 6 reasons why you
should do everything you can to help your best people leave Read more
[INSIDEHIGHERED.COM]
ZEN APPROACH: Executives Need To Find Calm In A Stormy World. There is a
certain irony to the fact that in an age characterized by individuals being
constantly stimulated by media, contactable 24 hours a day and often visibly
stressed one of the most quoted concepts in management is mindfulness. It is
seen as particularly pertinent to leadership. But what is it exactly? Read more
[FORBES.COM]

BIG CHALLENGES: Making Sense Of Mobile Application Integration. Architects
tend not to realize that mobile application integration is far different from
traditional application integration. Learn how to manage integration in a different
way. Read more
[SEARCHSOA.TECHTARGET.COM]
INTEGRATION PLATFORM: How iPaaS Is Changing Enterprise Integration. Ovum
discovered that iPaaS is gaining acceptance and broader adoption in the
enterprise. Of the nine vendors featured, six have already supported enterprise-
scale integration initiatives involving three or more use cases. Read more
[ITBUSINESSEDGE.COM]

AI INTEGRATION: Enterprises Learn Artificial Intelligence Lessons. In enterprises,
the integration of AI into a growing number of software tools, powerful
processors, and huge amounts of data will generate $11.1 billion in sales of AI
systems for enterprise applications by 2024, compared with $202.5 million this
year. Read more
[ENTERPRISETECH.COM]
SANS INSTITUTE: Secure Software Development Lifecycle Overview. In a previous
post, we received a question asking, “what is a secure software development
lifecycle”? This is an excellent question, and one that we receive quite often from
organizations during an application security assessment. Read more

CLOUD SECURITY: The Cloud Is Your Ticket To Full Business Engagement. CIOs
must seize the day and take advantage of a turbulent economic environment to
become more deeply embedded in business decision-making. That will make their
organizations more successful while also cementing their own role, says Oracle
Cloud Service CIO Tom Fisher. Read more
[FORBES.COM]
DATA PROTECTION: 4 Ways to Get C-Suite Executives to Notice You Online. Your
game plan to present yourself and your product to C-level executives — CEOs,
CIOs, COOs, CFOs, CMOs — is a completely different beast from an ordinary sales
strategy. Read more
[ENTREPRENEUR.COM]

FEMALE EXECS: From Outsider To The C-Suite: A Story On How To ‘Get To The Yes’.
How does a woman who grew up on the move and once lived out of the family car
end up graduating from Oxford, receive an award from the White House and
become a C-Level executive of a non-profit dedicated to women in technology
that was recently awarded $10 million from Apple? Read more
[FORBES.ORG]
SURVEY FINDINGS: Key and Certificates Attacks Taking IT Security to Breaking
Point. Research findings highlight that security professionals fear a
Cryptoapocalypse-like event the most. Coined by researchers at Black Hat 2013, a
Cryptoapocalypse would dwarf Heartbleed in scope, complexity, and time to
remediate. Find out more
[THECSUITE.CO.UK]

C-SUITE TRAITS: Secrets Of C-Suite Style. How many ambidextrous CEOs do you
know who part their hair down the middle, ride a bike to work while carrying a
sack lunch in their back pack, park the bike and don a pair of shorts for the
workday, and find time in a 50-hour work week to exercise four or more times?
Read more
[BENEFITSPRO.COM]
SECURITY SURVEY: 75% Of Firms Would Take Hours Or Longer To Spot Breach.
Although 68 percent of companies said they are prepared for a breach, 75 percent
estimated it would take hours, days, or weeks for them to notice that one had
occurred, according to a new survey. Read more
[CSOONLINE.COM]

Big Data
PEST CONTROL: Chicago Uses New Technology To Solve This Very Old Urban
Problem. Chicago has spent 12 years collecting data on resident complaints. Now
the city is harnessing that data to control the rat population, stopping infestations
before residents spot rats in the first place. Read more
[FORTUNE.COM]
COMMUNICATIONS: SAS Enlarges Its Palette For Big Data Analysis. SAS Institute
did big data decades before big data was the buzz, and now the company is
expanding on the ways large-scale computerized analysis can help organizations.
Read more
[PCWORLD.COM]

Big Data
DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS: How Do Big Data Analytics Enhance
Network Security? Big Data and Big Data analytics have become hot topics in
recent years. Unlike traditional methods of cause and effect deduction, Big Data
analytics generate predictions based on such enormous volumes of data, that
only the tools of association and inference are useful for finding relevance or
meaning. Read more
[FORBES.COM]
ADVICE: The Big Deal About “Big Data”—Your Guide To What The Heck It Actually
Means. There are three buzzwords that, if we had our way, would be stricken
completely from the world: “cloud,” “the Internet of Things,” and “big data.” Each
of them was coined in an attempt to elegantly capture a complex concept, and
each of them fails miserably. Find out more
[ARSTECHNICA.COM]

Business Intelligence
MANAGEMENT: Data Alone Won’t Guarantee Better Marketing Decisions. If we
have the data we need, why is it that it can’t lead to better business decisions? I
was often asked this question in the business intelligence (BI) course I taught for
a doctorate program – especially by those candidates with a marketing or finance
background. The concept of “better-informed” decisions is distinctly different
than the concept of “better” decisions in business. Read more
[CUSTEDGE.COM]
BI TOOLS: What Should You Invest In This Year? The BI software domain has seen
massive change over the last few years, as innovation has introduced a
bewildering array of new products. However, the contours of the overall software
category are clear enough with the emergence of six principal types or sub-
categories of BI software. Read more
[ITTOOLBOX.COM]

Business Intelligence
POWER BI: 16 New Updates to the Power BI Designer Preview. Microsoft
announces a new update for the Power BI Designer Preview. This update is their
biggest one to date, as it brings lots of new capabilities into the Designer;
particularly, the ability to create measures using DAX, as well as several other
new Modeling & Query features. If that wasn’t enough, there are also some
performance and usability improvements waiting for you to try… Read more
[BLOGS.MSDN.COM]

Document Management Systems
STRATEGY: Certain Considerations Regarding File and Document Management
Systems Protection. Documents encounter perils of various types. Customer
listings, sales-strategy reports and specific revenue statistics might fall into the
hands of competing firms. Exclusive personal data offered by clients and staff
members may be damaged resulting in legal actions. Recognition data for
instance bank-account login advice or credit-card details may be stolen by
thieves. Read more
[BUSINESS2COMMUNITY.COM]
ELECTRONIC RECORDS: What Ever Happened to the Paperless Office? Back in the
impossibly distant past of 1975, people had optimistic ideas about what business
offices would look like in the future. In a BusinessWeek article published in 1975
titled “The Office of the Future,” it was proposed that the 80s and 90s would
usher in an era where record handling would be purely electronic, eliminating the
need for paper. Read more
[NOTEBOOKREVIEW.COM]

Document Management Systems
PAPER WORKFLOW: Adobe Document Cloud Champions Paperless Office. Adobe
overhauls its Acrobat electronic document and EchoSign e-signature services with
the launch of the Adobe Document Cloud. Adobe has pooled its Acrobat PDF
creation technology and EchoSign e-signature service with other existing assets
such as OCR and image enhancement technologies to launch a new Document
Cloud service to power paperless document transactions. Read more
[DIGINOMICA.COM]

Virtualization
AMAZON WEB SERVICES: Amazon In a Battle for Cloud Supremacy. It’s still the
champion of cloud, but Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) finds itself increasingly
beset by challengers doing their best to take its title. Among the many
challengers stepping into the ring, the top contender is Microsoft. Read more
[VIRTUALIZATION.COM]
VMWARE VIDEO: Transforming Hybrid Cloud Security for Mobile Users. VMware
unveiled a new solution that minimizes security threats from users and mobile
devices inside the hybrid cloud. Through the combination of the VMware NSX
network virtualization platform with AirWatch EMM and/or VMware Horizon
desktop virtualization, VMware provides IT administrators the ability to micro-
segment the data center network. Read more
[BLOGS.VMWARE.COM]

Virtualization
INTEGRATION: DBAs More Concerned with Cloud, Virtualization than Big Data.
Structured data is still king, but that may be in part because many organizations
simply aren’t even trying to manage unstructured data, a just-released report by
Dell reveals. Dell commissioned Unisphere Research to query those who manage
data at North American companies. Read more
WHITEPAPER: Good to Great: Top Seven Optimization Tips and Tricks. Mastering
your virtual data center requires comprehending a dizzying array of software and
hardware configurations, settings and workflows. Read this whitepaper to learn
the top seven tips for managing even the most complex virtual data centers. Read
more
[WINDOWSITPRO.COM]

Big Data
DIGITAL HEALTH: Apple And IBM Say Big Data Will Save Lives. Apple and IBM have
reached a new agreement to use big data analytics to turn digital health into so
much more than a step counter – the conjunction between these and others in the
healthcare space will impact every part of health provision. Find out more
[COMPUTERWORLD.COM]
MARKET DATA: How Big Data Is Solving The Biggest, Industry-Specific Issues Of The
Day. We are only as clever as the decisions we make. Those decisions are based on
the facts and information that we have to hand at the time. Before, the data used
during that process was discarded once the judgment was made. Read more
[ITPORTAL.COM]

Big Data
FORECASTS: Wikibon Predicts Big Data Market To Top $61B In 2020. Wikibon has
extended its “Big Data Vendor Revenue and Market Forecast, 2011-2020” through
2020 and has estimated a 40 percent market growth in 2014, down from 60 percent
in 2013. Find out more
[SILICONANGLE.COM]

Internet of Things (IoT)
DESIGN CHALLENGES: How UX Design Can Improve The Internet Of Things. Right
now, companies are trying to make their connected product work, but few are
focused on making it usable. There needs to be a designed experience for users
to find value in connected products. One way to do that is utilizing Journey
Mapping to understand the pain points of interacting with connected products.
Read more
[MEDIUM.COM]
NEW THREATS: Security And The Internet Of Things – Three Considerations. On
the face of it, the Internet of Things (IoT) promises a world of unparalleled
convenience for ordinary people. Soon, you will control your devices and
appliances remotely, your fridge will automatically reorder goods that are
running low and your car will proactively book its next service. Read more
[NETWORKASIA.COM]

Internet of Things (IoT)
SECURITY STRATEGY: Planning for the Internet of Things. As organizations plan for
the future, and how security has to operate within their business, they now have
to worry about the Internet of Things. In this podcast recorded at RSA Conference
2015, Geoff Webb, Director of Solution Strategy at NetIQ, discusses the
implications and likely impact of the Internet of Things. Read more
[NET-SECURITY.COM]

Application Development
HOT TOPIC: A Never-Ending Debate Of HTML5 And Native Mobile App
Development. Discuss the sizzling topic for the mobility solutions to clear a
confusion for native mobile app development vs. HTML development. Know that,
what the proficient web and mobile app developer optimize for the amazing
technical results. Read more
[WHATECH.COM]
VIRTUAL STRATEGY: Mobility Ranks as Top Business Functionality Critical for Apps
in 2015. new findings from a joint survey with TechValidate that highlight the
business and technical priorities and challenges that IT organizations face when
developing applications in today’s increasingly complex development landscape.
More than 200 IT decision makers at enterprises worldwide were asked about the
kinds of applications they plan to build in 2015. Read more
[VIRTUAL-STRATEGY.COM]

Application Development
**** NEW APPROACH: Industry Watch: Developing Apps Horizontally. The most
important change in how custom software is created these days has nothing to do
with programming languages, development environments, agile methodologies or
code repositories. Instead, it’s about taking a horizontal approach to application
development, which allows for shared resources, composite pieces and staying up
to date. Read more
[SDTIMES.COM]
RAD TOOLS: Don’t Let Your App Choke During Development: Use A RAD Solution.
Every day we hear that IT teams are under growing pressure to deliver an ever
increasing number of apps. Managers and executives want to see immediate
results without understanding the amount of work that goes into coding an
application by hand. Read more
[TECHRADAR.COM]

Programming & Scripting Development
Client & Server-Side
TUTORIAL: Authenticate a Node.js API With JSON Web Tokens. Authentication is
one of the big parts of every application. Security is always something that is
changing and evolving. In the past, we have gone over Node authentication using
the great Passport npm package. Read more
[SCOTCH.IO.COM]
FREE PLUGINS: 25 jQuery Plugins for Custom Tabs And Accordions. Modern web
designers simply adore dynamic page elements. Dropdown menus, carousels,
tabbed links and accordion menus are just a few examples. All of these effects can
be recreated using free jQuery plugins without much code. Read more
[SPYRESTUDIOS.COM]

Programming & Scripting Development
Client & Server-Side
TROUBLESOME FEATURES: Three JavaScript Quirks That Java/C Developers Should
Know. JavaScript can be a deceiving language and it can be a real pain because it
isn’t 100% consistent. As it’s well known it does have bad parts, confusing or
redundant features that should be avoided: the infamous with statement, implicit
global variables and comparison erratic behavior are probably the best known.
Read more
[SITEPOINT.COM]

Cloud
PUBLIC CLOUD: Amazon and Microsoft Take Public Cloud Storage To The Next
Level. Microsft recently announced the general availability of Azure Premium
Storage, the choice of storage for demanding workloads. A week before that, at
the AWS Summit, Amazon has launched a new storage type on the public cloud
called Elastic File System. Both these announcements have a positive impact on
the public cloud adoption. Read more
[FORBES.COM]
SAAS: Here’s What Happens To DevOps When Cloud Adoption Reaches 100%.
Cloud adoption has initiated major changes for businesses across a wide variety of
industry sectors. Whereas traditional on-premise servers required organisations to
focus on hardware like server size and storage space, the move to the cloud has
brought applications and services to the forefront. Read more
[ITPROPORTAL.COM]

Cloud
ANALYSIS: Top Five Mistakes To Avoid When Migrating Applications To The Cloud.
Any business of consequence, or older than 10 years, has plenty of baggage:
proprietary technology, complex IT architectures, and aging applications. And
there is one rather intimidating process standing between these companies and
the benefits of the cloud: migration. Read more
[THOUGHTSONCLOUD.COM]
BUILDING MICROSERVICES: Microsoft Announces Azure Service Fabric Cloud
Platform. Azure Service Fabric is a contemporary implementation of the platform-
as-a-service (PaaS) cloud. Microsoft first entered that market in 2010 with
Windows Azure. But the new system should attract interest from developers keen
on rapidly updating certain parts of applications, instead of entire monolithic
applications. Read more
[VENTUREBEAT.COM]

Cloud
MACHINE LEARNING: Five Reasons It Is Moving To The Cloud. Amazon Web
Services turned a lot of heads recently when it launched a machine learning
platform aimed at making predictive analytics applications easy to build and run,
joining cloud juggernauts Microsoft and Google with similar ML offerings.
Read more
[DATANAMI.COM]
CLOUD FORECAST: How Digital Transformation Drives Cloud Computing Demand.
Digital Business Transformation projects gained momentum in 2014, as more
companies moved their legacy IT workloads to cloud computing platforms and
launched a variety of new cloud-native applications. This pervasive trend will
continue and accelerate for the duration of 2015. Read more
[CLOUDCOMPUTING-NEWS.NET]

Open Source
SEARCH ANALYTICS: Elasticsearch Changes Its Name, Enjoys An Amazing Open
Source Ride And Hopes To Avoid Mistakes. Elasticsearch sees some 700,000-
800,000 downloads per months and has been downloaded 20 million times
since the inception of the project. Read more
[FORBES.COM]
OFFLINE MAPS: Open Source Offline Map Tool For Android. To realize the full
potential of location-based smartphone apps, they should be built to support
offline mode and original map graphics. Creating a custom offline map is the
best choice. We were faced with this challenge as well, and the solution we
came up with was creating a separate library for this purpose. Read more
[OPENSOURCE.COM]

Open Data
DATA ACCESS: Feds Tap Zillow’s Chief Economist For Open-Data Initiative. Zillow
Chief Economist Stan Humphries has been named to an advisory panel that the
federal government says will help it do a better job unleashing vast troves of
data to foster economic growth and promote better decision-making —
including census data served up by real estate search sites. Read more
[INMAN.COM]
DIGITAL GROWTH: Openness Prevails But What Is Open Data? On Barack
Obama’s first official day in office, he declared that “in the face of doubt,
openness prevails” and brought the open data movement to the fore in the
USA. Read more
[INSURANCEAGE.COM]

Federal Agencies
DEFENSE DEPT: Why This National Data Breach Notification Bill Has Privacy
Advocates Worried. Nearly every state has its own law on when consumers must be
told that their data has been stolen in a cyber breach — but there’s no single
national standard that covers all intrusions. The patchwork of state laws has raised
concerns, especially in the wake of breaches that have hit retailers and the medical
field in recent years. Read more
[FIERCEGOVERNMENTIT.COM]
SOFTWARE: Governments Find Clear Reasons to Refresh Systems.“If it ain’t broke,
don’t fix it” may be sage advice for some situations, but it’s not necessarily the best
way to run an IT department, as Brunson White discovered when he became
Alabama’s first secretary of IT in 2013. Many of Alabama’s 36,000 desktop PCs were
chugging along, but the machines were still running Windows XP and only a few
months remained before Microsoft stopped supporting the operating system.
Read more
[ARSTECHNICA.COM]

Federal Agencies
IPv6: IG: DoD Must Speed Migration To IPv6. By not migrating to IPv6, DoD is
losing out on improved communication, warfighter mobility, situational
awareness and quality of service, and the longer the department waits, the
costlier the transition will be. Over time, IPv4 becomes more entrenched in
mission-critical systems even as its ability to support them decreases, the DoD
inspector general report (pdf) states. Read more
TALENT WORKFORCE: Inside the National Security Database. The National
Security Database was formed in 2011 as a government-vetted database of
cybersecurity professionals. The primary motivation was to push for an initiative
to identify ethical hackers and security experts and help government and
industry meet their manpower needs in security. NSD was charged with
organizing security talent that could be applied in sensitive and strategic areas,
where credibility and proven skillsets were paramount. Read more
[FEDWEEK.COM]

Federal Agencies
E-GOVERMENT: NIST Issues Draft De-Identification Guidance For Personally
Identifiable Information. As federal agencies deal with more sensitive
information – from digital documents to troves of “big data” – de-identifying
personally identifiable information is an emerging challenge. Because agencies
are under increased pressure to make raw data open to the public, the removal
of sensitive personal information from that data is critical. Read more
OIG NEWS: Medicare Contractors Have InfoSec Gaps. Some Medicare
administrative contractors have made improvements in their information
security programs, but most still have a way to go in closing a number of key
gaps, according to a new government watchdog report. Read more
[GOVINFOSECURITY.COM]

Federal Agencies
HEALTH IT GRANTS: The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information
Technology and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation within the
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are teaming to develop specialized
technical assistance and comprehensive online health IT tools and resources…
Read more
[FEDERALTIMES.COM]
NIST TIPS: Choosing the Right Federal Cloud Solution. The National Institute of
Standards and Technology is responsible for guiding the adoption of cloud
computing throughout the federal government. NIST researchers wrote the widely
recognized definition of cloud computing and in 2014 published the first volume of
the U.S. Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap, “High-Priority
Requirements to Further USG Agency Cloud Computing Adoption.” Read more
[FEDTECHMAGAZINE.COM]

Federal Agencies
NSTIC PRIVACY RULES: Smelling The Roses In The IDESG. The Identity
Ecosystem Steering Group (IDESG), now in its third year, is a key part of the
National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC). It serves as a
forum to build the core set of rules and standards to promote privacy, security,
interoperability, and ease of use for online services. Read more
[NSTIC.BLOGS.COM]
FEDERAL BUDGET: Government Promises Big Money, But Not For Tech. The
federal budget, introduced on Tuesday, promises lots of government money to
help businesses. The manufacturing and resource extraction industries as well
as small businesses will see most of that. There was little mention of the tech
sector and startups. Read more
[TECHVIBES.COM]

Federal Agencies
GOVERNMENT INVESTMENTS: The Future Of Civic Technology. There are many
conversations concerning “civic technology,” or “civic tech” and the opportunities
for leveraging digital tools to benefit the public. The $6 billion civic technology is
just a piece of the $25.5 billion that government spends on external information
technology (IT). Read more
[BROOKINGS.EDU]
USGS-LED STUDY: Smartphones Can Create Crowdsourced Earthquake Warning
Systems. Despite being less accurate than scientific-grade equipment, sensors in
smartphones and other personal electronic devices still could be used to build
early earthquake warning systems, according to a new study led by U.S.
Geological Survey scientists. Read more
[FIERCEMOBILEGOVERNMENT.COM]

Federal Agencies
ENERGY TECHNOLOGY: America’s New And Improved Energy Mix. Not too long
ago, America was governed by an either/or energy market. Back in the 1970s and
early 1980s, the rise and subsequent demise of solar energy as a viable energy
alternative was directly related to the jump and collapse in crude prices before
and after the OPEC oil embargo. Read more
[FUELFIX.COM]
OPM: OPM breach a failure on encryption, detection. The biggest misstep in the
breach of Office of Personnel Management networks was not the failure to block
the initial breach but the lack of encryption, detection and other safeguards that
should have prevented intruders from obtaining any useful information. Read
more
[FEDERALTIMES.COM]

Federal Agencies
CRADA AGREEMENT: Microsoft and NOAA Collaborate to Enable Data Access and
Innovation Across Government and Industry. Microsoft will host weather, water,
ocean, and climate data provided by NOAA scientists on the Microsoft Azure
Government cloud platform. We will host such well-known NOAA datasets as the
Global Forecast System, Global Ensemble Forecast System, and Climate Forecast
System. We also look forward to working with NOAA and our partners in
government and industry to identify and expose other datasets of interest. Read
more
[MICROSOFT.COM]

Federal Agencies
PRIVACY: A Retrospective Look – Smelling The Roses In The IDESG. As the IDESG
evolves in its third year, we are seeing work on the Identity Ecosystem Framework
(IDEF) progressing deliberately and in an organized manner. The IDEF is a
foundational document that presents the core requirements and standards,
functional model, and means to assess and recognize conformance for the
participants of the Identity Ecosystem. Read more
[NSTIC.BLOGS.GOVDELIVERY.COM]
PODCAST: Veteran Federal Contracting Officer Talks About Benefits Of Agile
Software Development. Veteran federal contracting officer Jonathan Mostowski
at U.S. Digital Service used the painting analogy during a “Behind the Buy”
podcast interview with Anne Rung, the administrator of the Office of Federal
Procurement Policy, to explain the benefits of agile software development
compared to the traditional “waterfall” approach. Read more

Federal Agencies
MANAGEMENT: News and Notes from GITEC 2015. The 2015 GITEC Summit, held
in Baltimore, featured more than 200 government and industry leaders discussing
some of the biggest issues facing federal technology leaders today. Here are news
and notes from the conference. Read more
DOWNLOAD REPORT: Department of Defense Cyber Strategy April 2015. In a
manner consistent with U.S. and international law, the Department of Defense
seeks to deter attacks and defend the United States against any adversary that
seeks to harm U.S. national interests during times of peace, crisis, or conflict.
Read more
[PUBLICINTELLIGENCE.NET]

Federal Agencies
REFORM ROLL-BACKS: Getting Tech to ‘Show Up’. Rolling back reforms sure won’t
attract innovative players to the government market. According to the US CTO,
the more tech experts from Silicon Valley join the government, the more the
government is likely to begin adopting smarter, more contemporary IT and
technology practices. Read more
[GOVEXEC.COM]
STATE EXECS TALK TECH: How Do We Adopt New Technology? Painfully. In theory,
all sorts of great technology is coming online for state government use:
Unmanned aerial vehicles for agricultural surveys and building inspections.
iBeacons for museums and other tourism centers. Even 3D printing for state labs
and cryptocurrencies for online payments. Read more
[GCN.COM]

Federal Agencies
HOMELAND SECURITY ALERT: Nepal Earthquake Disaster Email Scams. US-CERT
would like to warn users of potential email scams regarding the earthquake in
Nepal. The scam emails may contain links or attachments that may direct users to
phishing or malware infected websites. Phishing emails and websites requesting
donations for fraudulent charitable organizations commonly appear after these
types of natural disasters. Read more
[US-CERT.GOV]
NEW BATTLEGROUND: Mobile-First Will Not Be Enough. The global mobile
revolution is still in its early stages! There will be nearly 3.5 billion individual
smartphone users among more than 5 billion individual mobile subscribers by
2019, Forrester forecasts. Mobile will clearly be the new battleground where you
must win, serve and retain your customers globally. Read more
[INFORMATION-MANAGEMENT.COM]

Federal Agencies
SURVEY FINDINGS: Most Americans Don’t Care About Digital Services. The
Obama administration is putting a heavy emphasis on using digital tools to
improve the way citizens interact with government. However that might not be
what Americans actually want. Read more
[FEDERALTIMES.COM]
KODAK PARTNERSHIP: Federal EDA Grant Boosts Technology Innovation And
Product Commercialization. With new funding from a federal Economic
Development Administration (EDA) grant of over $600,000, the Innovation
Accelerator Foundation (IAF) and Kodak’s Eastman Business Park (EBP) are
partnering to accelerate the commercialization of technologies for products in
the areas of energy and bio-materials advanced manufacturing. Read more
[MARKETWATCH.COM]

Federal Agencies
GITEC 2015: Federal Cyber Spending Continues to Grow. Cybersecurity will
continue to grow as a large percentage of federal technology spending, likely
reaching as much as 20 to 25 percent in the coming years, said Kevin Plexico,
Deltek’s vice president of information solutions, in opening remarks at the recent
2015 GITEC Summit. Read more
FRANK KENDALL: STEM Workforce, Bbp 3.0 Key To U.S. Tech Superiority.
Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall outlined the need to develop future
workers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math to ensure U.S.
technological advantage, the Defense Department‘s Armed with Science blog.
Read more
[EXECUTIVEGOV.COM]

Federal Agencies
SECURITY: Audits Hamper Federal Cloud Migration. It can safely be said that
cloud computing is taking root in government as both use and budgets continue
to rise. While adoption issues remain, the results of a 2015 Meritalk survey are
encouraging: Seventy-two percent of respondents say cloud security has
improved over the last year, and 67 percent believe their data is safer in cloud
environments than in legacy systems. Read more
CIVIL LIBERTIES: Law Banning Default Encryption Unlikely. Laws rarely, if ever,
keep up with technology, but even if they could, the consequences could prove
more harmful than the benefits. That was evident at a recent hearing of the
House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Information
Technology that addressed the encryption – and security – of mobile devices.
Read more
[GOFINFOSECURITY.COM]

Federal Agencies
****ECURITY: Audits Hamper Federal Cloud Migration. It can safely be said that
cloud computing is taking root in government as both use and budgets continue
to rise. While adoption issues remain, the results of a 2015 Meritalk survey are
encouraging: Seventy-two percent of respondents say cloud security has
improved over the last year, and 67 percent believe their data is safer in cloud
environments than in legacy systems. Read more
CIVIL LIBERTIES: Law Banning Default Encryption Unlikely. Laws rarely, if ever,
keep up with technology, but even if they could, the consequences could prove
more harmful than the benefits. That was evident at a recent hearing of the
House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Information
Technology that addressed the encryption – and security – of mobile devices.
Read more
[GOFINFOSECURITY.COM]

IT - State & Local Governments
VIRGINIA: How Suffolk Future-Proofed City Hall. Until last August, the
communications and network infrastructure in the city of Suffolk, Va., were
being held together by “rubber bands and paper clips.” But a network
modernization seven months ago has given the IT department complete up time
and the infrastructure to deploy future technologies. Read more
[GOVLOOP.COM]
CELLULAR INTERCEPTION: New California Bill Would Require Local Approval For
Stingray Use. One California state senator has a fairly simple idea: what if a city
or county government had to affirmatively and publicly approve any acquisition
or use of a stingray? A new bill pushing for just that cleared its first committee
hurdle in California, as Senate Bill 741 passed the state’s Senate Committee on
Governance and Finance by a vote of seven to zero. Read more
[ARSTECHNICA.COM]

CALIFORNIA: Los Angeles Deploying Smart Streetlight Network. A project to
improve lighting controls on the streets of Los Angeles has the potential to
become an expansive, data-collecting network in the city. The Los Angeles
Bureau of Street Lighting has been upgrading the city’s streetlights to LED bulbs
for years. But the city is also attaching mobile sensors to the devices, enabling
them to know what bulbs have burned out. Read more
[GOVTECH.COM]
MISSOURI: Kansas City, Cisco Partner To Develop Smart Cities Technology.
Kansas City will team up with Cisco Systems over the next decade to deploy $15
million worth of smart city technologies. The deal, which has been in the works
since last May, will be formalized through a city ordinance that the Kansas City
Council’s Finance, Governance and Ethics Committee. The city will contribute
around $3.7 million of the project’s total tab. Read more
[FIERCECITIES.COM]

CALIFORNIA: Drone Pros And Cons Debated At Cal State Long Beach. Drones are
flying to a neighborhood near you. More than a million small, recreational
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles already in circulation in the United States, according
to Michael E. Drobac, executive director of the Small UAV Coalition, which
pushes for the advancement of drones for commercial, recreational and public
use. Read more
[PRESSTELEGRAM.COM]
STATE BUDGET: California Refocuses Statewide IT Plan. The Golden State has the
largest state budget for information technology in the nation. That draws a lot of
attention to how California’s various agencies and departments spend their IT
resources as well as the state’s longer term IT strategy. Read more
[STATESCOOP.COM]

FLORIDA: Legislature Approves Online Voter Registration. Legislators in Florida
approved a bill recently authorizing the creation of a statewide system that
allows citizens to register to vote online, but whether the bill is destined to
become law remains in question. Read more
[STATESCOOP.COM]
NASCIO 2015: State IT Leaders Dive Into Disruptive Technologies. Although
government IT traditionally hasn’t been known as being innovative, that’s
beginning to change with efforts from several states. Read more
[STATETECHMAGAZINE.COM]

COLORADO: Denver Brings Mindset of Silicon Valley to Government. There are
few government agencies that would describe themselves as having a startup
mentality and a culture of employee empowerment. Denver’s central IT
department is one of those few. Read more
[STATETECHMAGAZINE.COM]
PENNSYLVANIA: Philly Leaps Into Meerkat Live Streaming. The city of
Philadelphia’s Twitter presence is normally active with the latest news and
information about the city and its mayor, Michael Nutter, but something
different popped up on the city’s feed Monday–a block of text reading “LIVE
NOW” and inviting the user to view a live stream of a press conference on a new
social media application called Meerkat. Read more
[STATESCOOP.COM]

IT Security | Cybersecurity
FREAK VULNERABILITY: Nearly 1 Million New Malware Threats Released Every Day.
Companies are struggling to fend off cyber attacks as hackers get faster, sneakier and
more creative. New reports from the Internet security teams at Symantec (SYMC,
Tech30) and Verizon (VZ, Tech30) provide an alarming picture of how difficult it’s
becoming for computer users to stay safe online. Read more
[MONEY.CNN.COM]
ASSESSMENT TOOLS: Breach Defense Playbook. This blog series will outline breach
prevention and incident response services that organizations can use to stay ahead of
hackers and not fall victim to the cyberbreach fallout. However, before we look forward,
let’s look back and recount what we’ve seen in the news recently so we can learn from
others: Read more
[DARKREADING.COM]

TALENT POOL: Lack Of Skilled Infosec Pros Creates High-Risk Environments. 82 percent of
organizations expect to be attacked in 2015, but they are relying on a talent pool they
view as largely unqualified and unable to handle complex threats or understand their
business. Read more
[NET-SECURITY.ORG]
RANSOMWARE: Errors Like Email Fails Cause 30 Percent of Data Breaches, Verizon Says.
Email fails are common, but for companies, they can be expensive and dangerous
mistakes. The single biggest cause of data breaches in 2014 was “miscellaneous errors,”
like a staffer emailing sensitive information to the wrong email address, according to
Verizon’s annual Data Breach Investigations Report Read more
[NBCNEWS.COM]

PATCHES: ISACA Is First To Combine Skills-Based Cybersecurity Training With
Performance-Based Exams And Certifications To Address Global Cyber Talent
Shortage. ISACA has introduced a portfolio of new cybersecurity certifications
that are the first to combine skills-based training with performance-based
exams and certifications. The seven new Cybersecurity Nexus (CSX)
certifications help professionals build and evolve their careers in a constantly
changing field and help close the skills gap for employers. Read more
[ISACA.COM]
SECURITY REINFORCEMENTS: Pentagon To Recruit Thousands For Cybersecurity
Reserve Force. Military leaders want private sector and National Guard cyber
professionals at the ready in case of a national network emergency. The
Pentagon is prepared to draft thousands of private sector and National Guard
cyber pros in the event of a network emergency affecting American lives, a top
U.S. military official said. Read more
[DEFENSEONE.COM]

SSL/TLS: The Current State of Insecurity: Strategies for Inspecting SSL Traffic.
Encrypted traffic accounts for a large and growing percentage of all network
traffic. While the adoption of SSL and its successor, Transport Layer Security
(TLS), should be cause for celebration – since encryption improves
confidentiality and message integrity – it also puts organizations at risk. This is
because hackers can leverage encryption to conceal their exploits from security
devices that do not inspect SSL traffic. Attackers are wising up and taking
advantage of this gap in corporate defenses. Read more
[INFOSECISLAND.COM]

WEB SECURITY: Fire Cannon! Encryption Everywhere Protects You On The Web.
Imagine if, with no effort on your part, every web connection you made was
secured, even the most ordinary, such as visiting our fair site while not logged in.
You might think, why bother when I’m just visiting sites I read or use for
reference—sites where there’s no personal or financial information to steal? Read
more
[MACWORLD.COM]
EMAIL BEST PRACTICES: Practical IT: What You Need To Know About Email
Encryption. It’s surprising how many people aren’t aware how insecure email is.
Many also have a horror story about sending an email to the wrong person (or
when they didn’t check who was copied on an email when they hit “Reply All”),
but they don’t consider how the same underlying issues could affect their privacy.
Read more
[NAKEDSECURITY.COM]

REPORT FINDINGS: Federal Cyber Workforce Woefully Inadequate. Rigid hiring
processes and low pay for specialized employees have kept the U.S. government
from developing the type of cyber workforce it needs to keep up with growing
attacks, according to an independent analysis. The Partnership for Public Service
released a report on Tuesday saying the federal government has positioned
itself poorly for recruiting cybersecurity personnel at a time when the nation as
a whole is already facing a shortage. Read more
[WASHINGTONPOST.COM]
ENCRYPTION: Crypto ‘Front Door’ Debate Likely to Go On For Years. Much of the
current spike in interest around cryptography and encryption comes directly
from the revelations of Edward Snowden about the NSA’s methods, tools and
tactics. That agency’s efforts to allegedly subvert cryptographic standards and
defeat protocols such as SSL have drawn the attention and ire of users, security
experts and cryptographers around the world. Read more
[THREATPOST.COM]

OS X YOSEMITE: Rootpipe Vulnerability Still Exploitable On Patched Machines. A
vulnerability in Apple OS X that was reportedly patched in the company’s OS X
10.10.3 release appears to still be open to exploitation, according to one
security researcher’s findings. Patrick Wardle reported on his blog that the
“rootpipe” bug was supposedly patched only for OS X Yosemite; however,
Wardle wrote that he found a “novel, yet trivial way” for a local user to abuse
rootpipe on patched machines. Read more
[SCMAGAZINE.COM]

THREATS: Bank Botnets Continue to Thrive One Year After Gameover Zeus
Takedown. Despite the takedowns of the Gameover Zeus and Shylock botnets
last year, banking botnet activity continues to persist unabated. If anything, they
have become even more sophisticated and evasive suggesting that those behind
these botnets have learned and adapted from the Zeus and Shylock takedowns,
a report from Dell SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit said Wednesday. Read
more
[DARKREADING.COM]

PRIME TARGETS: Eight Reasons Why Cyber Attacks Hit Retailers. 2014 was a
rough year for retailers. It felt as though a major retailer was breached every
few weeks, leaving consumers and stakeholders not only more and more
frustrated, but increasingly concerned for the safety of personal information.
With limited IT resources and massive amounts of customer data to protect
across multiple endpoints, effectively monitoring and defending the network
from vulnerabilities is no easy task – regardless of the size and financial stability
of the organization. Read more

SANSFIRE 2015: Information Security Training in Baltimore, Maryland. The SANS
Institute offers hands-on, immersion-style security training courses taught by
real-world practitioners. The site of SANSFIRE 2015, June 13-20, 2015, the Hilton
Baltimore is located in the Inner Harbor district, a prime business and cultural
area in the city. Read more
[SANS.ORG]
CORPORATE TECH: Why Millennials Are an Information-Security Threat.
Millennials like being social, and they like using technology. What some don’t
recognize is how the combination of these behaviors may cause issues for
organizations. Read more
[BLOGS.WSJ.COM]

LAWSUIT OUTCOME: The Bad News For Infosec In The Target Settlement. The
legal argument behind the $10 million Class Action lawsuit and subsequent
settlement is a gross misrepresentation of how attackers operate. Central to the
recent Target data breach lawsuit settlement was the idea that cyber attacks are
mechanistic and follow a prescribed course or chain of events. Read more
[DARKREADING.COM]
CLOUD RESTRICTIONS: Microsoft Unveils Plans For Stronger Encryption And
Tighter Controls Over Office 365 Data. One of the biggest barriers to adoption of
cloud services is trust. For organizations accustomed to running on-premises
servers, handing over business-critical services to a third party is not an easy
decision. That’s especially true in a world where the very example of Edward
Snowden offers a nightmare scenario for a CIO. Read more
[ZDNET.COM]

CLICKJACKERS: Inside The Strange New World Of Modern Spyware. If you were
lucky or, in truth, unlucky enough to download a Chrome and Firefox extension
from a site called WeLikeTheWeb.com in 2014 you’d be presented with not much
more than a website recommendation engine that you’d probably ignore or
uninstall. The app, on its surface, was innocuous. Read more
[TECHCRUNCH.COM]
REMOTE CONTROL SYSTEMS: The DEA Is Spending Millions Of Dollars On Spyware.
The Drug Enforcement Agency has been spending millions on spyware tools to take
over suspects’ phones, according to an exclusive report from Motherboard.
Government records show the agency paying $2.4 million for a “remote control
system” that could be implanted in a suspect’s phone. Read more
[THEVERGE.COM]

THREAT REPORT: Attackers Focus on Vulnerability Exploits in 2H 2014 – Report.
Premium-rate mobile malware, ransomware and Facebook-targeted malware
caused chaos in the second half of 2014, according to the latest F-Secure Threat
Report. The Finnish security company’s biannual report highlighted some key
emerging attack trends for the last six months of the year, including social
media-targeted malware like Kilim. Read more
[INFOSECURITY-MAGAZINE.COM]
RSA 2015: Cyber-Security Professionals Identify Cyber-Criminals As Biggest
Threat. The majority of threat actors attacking organisations are cyber criminals.
That’s the surprising view of hundreds of cybersecurity professionals who
completed a landmark survey for ISACA and RSA Conference. Read more
[SCMAGAZINE.COM]

COURT RULING: Trend Micro Wins Legal Dispute With Patent Troll. Security
giant Trend Micro has dodged a potentially costly copyright infringement trial
with Intellectual Ventures after a judge invalidated two key patents belonging to
the firm. Judge Leonard Stark ruled at the end of last week that the patents
were too abstract and not eligible for legal protection. Read more
[INFOSECURITY-MAGAZINE.COM]
SANS SECURITY AWARENESS: Protecting Our Youth from the Wolves of
Cyberspace. The goal of the RSA Keynote panel on protecting kids online was to
raise awareness of the risks kids face online today, but also just as importantly
what we can do about it. Read more
[SECURINGTHEHUMAN.COM]

THREAT ALERT: Static Encryption Key Found in SAP HANA Database. SAP’s in-
memory relational database management system, HANA, contains a whopper of
a security weakness: a default encryption key guarding passwords, stored data
and backups. an attacker could use a SQL injection, directory traversal, XML
external entity attack or exploit another web-based vulnerability in order to
remotely execute code. Since the encryption key is static and the same for every
SAP HANA installation by default, an attacker with access would be able to read
an encrypted data store. Read more
[THREATPOST.COM]

QUESTION: Why Can’t Silicon Valley Create Breakable Non-Breakable Encryption?
Ever since Apple and Google enabled full-device encryption by default on their
mobile operating systems, the law enforcement community has been kicking up a
stink. The head of the FBI issued dire warnings of children dying if the crypto trend
was allowed to continue. The head of the NSA agrees, and so too does the British
Prime Minister. Read more
[THEREGISTER.CO.UK]
GREAT NEWS: There’s Now A Decryption Tool For Teslacrypt Ransomware.
TeslaCrypt looks very much like the Cryptolocker ransomware, but in addition to
encrypting the usual assortment of file types (documents, images, videos,
database files, etc.), it also hits file types associated with video games and game
related software (saved games, Steam activation keys, etc.). Read more
[NET-SECURITY.ORG]

FREQUENTLY ASKED: What Is A Zero-Day Attack, And Can Anything Defend
Against It? Zero-days continue to represent one of the biggest thorns in the side
of Internet security. Thorns that, while difficult to defend against directly, can
still be avoided with a proper set of tools and techniques ready at your side.
Read more
[DIGITALTRENDS.COM]
SECURITY STANDARDS: The First Steps To Threat Intelligence Sharing. While
threat intelligence has become a standard part of the suite of tools a company
uses to defend itself, the sharing of that threat intelligence is still in its infancy.
You might even say we’re taking baby steps, and years from now, we’ll look back
fondly on the home videos. Find out more
[SECURITYINTELLIGENCE.COM]

RECURRING THREAT: Macro-Enabled Malware Making A Comeback. Malware
that uses macros as part of its infection method has been around for more than
a decade, and was one of the first major techniques to drive changes at
software vendors such as Microsoft. The tactic has been making a comeback of
late, and Microsoft is seeing a major spike in the volume of malware using
macros since the beginning of the year. Read more
[THREATPOST.COM]
ADVICE: How Much Security Software Do You Really Need? The Internet is
teeming with malware that can infect your computer, and it’s important to use
security software to protect yourself. To evaluate these products, Consumer
Reports visited 75 dangerous websites in a secure testing environment. We also
infected our test computers, which were running Windows 8.1, with more than
100 pieces of malware. Read more
[FOXNEWS.COM]

ANDROID NEWS: Fandroids, Take Your Phone’s Antivirus And Burn It. Adrian
Ludwig, lead engineer for Android security, explained that Google is now
scanning for malware so often and has become so adept at spotting malware
that less than 1 per cent of Android devices has a malware problem. Read more
[THEREGISTER.COM]
AUTHENTICATION ALTERNATIVE: Yahoo Tests Ear-Based Smartphone
Identification System. Yahoo is working on a way of unlocking a mobile phone
using the owner’s ear rather than a password or fingerprint. It is also looking to
use fists or even the way people grip their smartphone as alternative forms of
biometric authentication. Read more
[BBC.COM]

CONNECTED VEHICLES: Cybersecurity In Cars: Are We At Risk? Today’s
connected cars provide innovative technologies to interact between drivers,
their devices, and their cars. While these new technologies provide convenient
opportunities for car companies and their customers, they also expose them to
cybersecurity breaches. Read more
[CRAINSDETROIT.COM]

Customer Experience
NEW TERRITORY: When Managing The Customer Experience Becomes An IT
Problem. Customer experience management once fell under the general purview of
the marketing department. With the advent of mobile-first and omni-channel
marketing strategies, marketers can’t go at it alone and are leaning heavily on IT to
help get initiatives off the ground. IT consultant Bill Bonney says there are a few
things IT teams should know about their role in customer experience management.
Read more
[FIERCECONTENTMANGEMENT.COM]
REPORT CARD: HealthCare.gov Still Gets Poor Marks for Customer Experience.
HealthCare.gov’s botched rollout may have been mitigated by a mercenary band of
techies, but it’s still behind the curve in customer experience, according to
Forrester’s Customer Experience Index. Read more
[NEXTGOV.COM]

Customer Experience
ENTERPRISE CLOUD: Jemena Seeks Deeper Customer Experience With SAP Cloud.
Energy infrastructure company Jemena has selected SAP Cloud for Customer
solution to support its restructured process lines across its major assets –
electricity, water and gas. Read more
[ITWIRE.COM]

Web Development
CHROME: Google Commits To Updating Chrome For Windows XP Users For Another
8 Months. Windows. You either love it or you hate it, and if you love it, there’s a
roughly 1-in-10 chance that you love it so much you couldn’t bear to move away
from Windows XP. An operating system so old that even Microsoft has quit
supporting it. Luckily, Google feels different about the 11% of worldwide computers
believed to still use Windows XP. The search giant has announced that it plans to
continue supporting the ageing operating system with new builds of its Chrome
browser. Read more
[TALKANDROID.COM]

Web Development
OPERA: Is This Browser Innovation Wild Card? The web browser industry is 25 years
old, which is an eternity in the tech world. Though some of the early entrants have
disappeared, and a few arrived over the last decade, change in the industry has
been driven (or resisted) mostly by pre-installation deals on hardware devices.
Despite continuous incremental changes, any users of progenitor browsers (like
Nexus or Mosaic) would find today’s tools surprisingly familiar. Read more
[FORBES.COM]
FREE DOWNLOAD: Chromium Browser 44.0.2372.0 For Windows Latest Version.
Chromium Google Chrome draws its source code is open source web browser
project. This is for all users to experience the web a safer, faster and more stable
way it was designed to provide. Chromium is really a web browser application,
rather than a tabbed window manager or shell. This project a more intuitive, user-
friendly user interface in an attempt to make the experience of putting unnecessary
stuff is avoided. Read more
[FORBES.COM]

Web Development
BACK TO BASICS: Is Web 1.0 Making A Comeback? Is your website optimized for
Netscape 2.0? Fifteen years ago that was a critical question in IT, but it’s those early
days of the internet that some yearn for. Back in the 1990s, chat rooms weren’t
global platforms demanding participation, and hosted no advertising. Read more
[TECHRADAR.COM]
FREE WEB RESOURCES: 85+ Best Free Responsive WordPress Themes. WordPress
has been ended up being the most mainstream CMS of this era and everybody has
acknowledged it for its shake strong highlights and execution. The light weight
structure has empowered the execution we require to view our site quick on our
normal cell phones like tablets, cell phones, portable workstations and so forth.
Read more
[FORBES.COM]

Web Development
CITIZEN INTERACTION: How IoT Will Reshape Government. The world’s
governments are under pressure to improve end-to-end citizen experience,
optimise resource allocation, and re-imagine the way their employees, partners,
and suppliers contribute to service delivery. In an IOT Government report market
watcher IDC exposed technologies such as cloud, mobile, social, and Big Data,
which will create opportunities to deliver original business capabilities along with
the accelerated innovation in areas such as robotics, natural interfaces, cognitive
systems, and IoT. Read more
[FORBES.COM]

Spyware
NATIONAL SECURITY: The DEA Is Spending Millions Of Dollars On Spyware. The
Drug Enforcement Agency has been spending millions on spyware tools to take over
suspects’ phones, according to an exclusive report from Motherboard. Government
records show the agency paying $2.4 million for a “remote control system” that
could be implanted in a suspect’s phone Read more
[THEVERGE.COM]
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: Lawyer Representing Police Whistleblowers Says
Department Tried To Install Malware On His Computer During Discovery Process. An
Arkansas lawyer representing police whistleblowers has filed a motion for sanctions
after discovering spyware on a hard drive government officials mailed to him. The
hard drive supposedly contained discovery information related to police
whisltblower litigation. Read more
[FEDERALTIMES.COM]

Surveillance
ENCRYPTION: More And More Companies Use It, Despite Nasty Tech Headaches.
Just over a third (36 percent) of organisations said they now have an enterprise-
wide encryption strategy in place, a number that has been steadily rising from the
15 percent reported a decade ago, according to a survey. Read more
[ZDNET.COM]
DRONE SPYING: North Dakota Governor Signs Bill To Drastically Restrict The Use Of
Drones By State And Local Law Enforcement. House Bill 1328 requires law
enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before deploying a drone for surveillance
purposes with only a few exceptions. The legislation also provides a blanket
prohibition on the use of weaponized drones, on the use of unmanned aircraft for
private surveillance, and on drone surveillance of persons exercising their right of
free speech or assembly. Read more
[TENTHAMENDMENTCENTER.COM]

Databases
SQL SERVER PERFORMANCE TUNING: Backward Scanning of an Index. One of the
key areas to investigate during performance optimization is the indexing strategy.
Not building the right index based on the read pattern may be disastrous specially
when databases are big. Read more
[BLOGS.MSDN.COM]
SQL SERVER: Create Login with SID – Method to Synchronize Logins on Secondary
Server. How many times you had a problem where you have deployed a high
availability solution, but the application is not able to use database and getting
login failed for user after failover? Note that this issue would happen only with SQL
Logins not Windows Login. Read more
[BLOG.SQLAUTHORITY.COM]

Databases
SOLUTIONS: How to Attach a SQL Server Database without a Transaction Log and
with Open Transactions. Here the author will cover the not so uncommon scenario
where someone gives you a SQL Server database to attach to your instance, but
only gives you the *.mdf file. Unfortunately, when you try to attach the database
the SQL Server engine complains about the missing transaction log and aborts the
attachment process. Read more
[MSSQLTIPS.COM]
MOBILE SECURITY: Squaring Big Data With Database Queries. Although next-gen
big data tools such as Hadoop, Spark, and MongoDB are finding more and more
uses, most organizations need to maintain data in traditional relational stores as
well. Deriving the benefits of both key/value stores and relational databases takes a
lot of juggling. Read more
[RADAR.OREILLY.COM]

Databases
WEB-BASED APPLICATIONS: Oracle Releases Application Express 5 with All-New
User Interface. Oracle has released Application Express 5, a new version of the
popular tool for development and deployment of professional web-based
applications for desktops and mobile devices using only a web browser. Read more
[DBTA.COM]
APACHE SPARK: Performance Improvements In SQL, Python, Dataframes, And
More. 2014 was the most active year of Spark development to date, with major
improvements across the entire engine. One particular area where it made great
strides was performance: Spark set a new world record in 100TB sorting, beating
the previous record held by Hadoop MapReduce by three times, using only one-
tenth of the resources. Read more
[DATABRICKS.COM]

Databases
INSIDER NEWS: Oracle Database 12c Now Certified By SAP! With database
innovation being at the heart of the real-time enterprise, our partners are
recognizing the importance of moving to the latest version of Oracle Database. All
SAP products based on SAP NetWeaver 7.x, including SAP Business Suite 7, are now
certified and supported on Oracle Database 12c. Read more
[BLOGS.ORACLE.COM]
DATABASE ADMINISTRATION: Understanding Cross-Database Transactions in SQL
Server. Microsoft ‘Always On’ technology does not support distributed or cross-
database transactions. Why not? Grahaeme Ross shows how to investigate cross-
database transactions to understand the problem in more detail, and concludes
that a Cross-Database transaction can cause loss of data integrity in the commit
phase of the two-phase commit. Read more
[SIMPLE-TALK.COM]

Databases
BUILD DEVELOPER NEWS: Microsoft Announces Elastic SQL Database Pools For
Azure. Developers and independent software vendors who often run hundreds —
or even thousands — of separate databases for their customers now have a new
option to manage them while keeping costs predictable. Read more
[TECHCRUNCH.COM]
TECH WATCH: Open Source Threatens To Eat The Database Market. The database
market has largely been impervious to open source pricing pressure. That may be
about to change. Read more
[INFOWORLD.COM]

Databases
GARTNER RESULTS: Relational Open Source Databases Come Of Age. In its report,
The State of Open-Source RDBMSs, 2015, Gartner found that open source relatoinal
database management systems (OSRDBMSs) have matured to the point where they
can replace commercial databases. CIOs can now consider them as a standard
infrastructure choice, the company advised. Read more
[ITWORLDCANADA.COM]
OPEN SOURCE: Which Relational DBMS Is Best For Your Company? The relational
landscape continues to be dominated by Oracle, IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server.
If you’re looking to acquire a new RDBMS, it makes sense to begin by reviewing
these three market-leading products because there’s an abundance of experienced
talent developing applications and administering databases using these RDBMSes.
Read more
[SEARCHDATAMANGEMNT.TECHTARGET.COM]

Databases
RELATIONAL DBMS: PostgreSQL Advances In The JSON Datastore Landscape.
Relational databases are evolving, with PostgreSQL getting more and more features
inspired but the non relational world. Since version 9.2 Postgres supports the new
JSON datatype and since 9.3 there were 12 new functions and dedicated JSON
operators. Read more
[INFOQ.COM]

Software & Operating Systems
MICROSOFT: Here’s More Proof That Companies Are Jumping On Microsoft Office
365 Like Crazy. Microsoft’s Office 365 has become a bona fide success in terms of
the number of people starting to use it. Although there are still some concerns that
it will ever be as profitable a business as the Office software it is replacing, Office
365 has officially crossed a new milestone. Read more
[BUSINESSINSIDER.COM]
WINDOWS 10 NEWS: Microsoft Releases New Windows 10, It’s The Big One. Let’s
cut to the chase. What Windows 10 Build 10061 does so well is bring everything
together. It brings Start, Taskbar and Action Center improvements, polishes
Continuum and Task View, gives the Virtual Desktops some much needed love and
there are new Mail and Calendar apps. It’s tight, smart and nicely knits new with
old. Read more
[FORBES.COM]

EXPERT ADVICE: Switching Operating Systems Is Almost Never The Answer To
Problems. One of the worst pieces of advice given to people looking for help and
advice with computer problems is that they should switch to a different operating
system. Here’s why, along with some tips for anyone who still wants to change
operating systems. Read more
[ZDNET.COM]
HOW-TO: Hit The Jackpot When Selecting Enterprise Software By Using RFP
Scoring. Most enterprise software RFPs (or RFIs or RFQs) contain hundreds or
thousands of requirements. When vendors respond to these RFPs, how do you deal
with so many requirements? How do you take the gamble out of selecting
software? Read more
[CIO.COM]

USER EXPERIENCE: What Enterprise Software Users Really Want, If They Are Candid
with Themselves. Perhaps it’s the fresh-faced optimism of the new-ish year, but
lately, I’ve been seeing lots of instances where customers and users are telling UX
designers in specific detail what it is they want out of their experience with
software—and we, as UX designers, believing them. Not only do we believe them,
but we are also creating experiences around what they say Read more
[UXMATTERS.COM]
GOOD NEWS: Blackberry Back On Track This Year; Piggybacking On Enterprise
Software Services. After almost disappearing in 2013, BlackBerry is back on track
this year, thanks in large part to its enterprise software services. But the brand also
strives to return to its former glory by releasing new phones, including the brand
new Leap. Read more
[TECH.FIRSTPOST.COM]

Software As A Service (SaaS)
OPERATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Splunk Announces International Availability of
Splunk Cloud on Amazon Web Services. Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK), provider of the
leading software platform for real-time Operational Intelligence, today announced
that Splunk Cloud™ is generally available (GA) internationally through nine Amazon
Web Services’ (AWS) global regions and will be available soon in AWS GovCloud for
U.S. government agencies, contractors and businesses. Splunk Cloud has gained
significant traction as an enterprise-ready cloud service with a 100 percent uptime
service level agreement (SLA). Read more
[SPLUNK.COM]

Software As A Service (SaaS)
AFTER SAAS: Opportunities for Next-Gen CRM. Over the past 15 years,
Salesforce.com has risen to be the undisputed leader in CRM. However, says
Gartner, the CRM market overall is showing single digit growth, so companies like
Salesforce could be disrupted. A mobile-social offering targeted at sellers of peer-
to-peer marketplaces like Etsy and Shopify and priced based on its performance
could gain enough momentum to create a new CRM leader. Read more
[HUFFFINGTONPOST.COM]

Personal Tech
PROJECT FI: Google Rolls Out New U.S. Wireless Service. launched a new U.S.
wireless service that switches between Wi-Fi and cellular networks to curb data use
and keep phone bills low. The service, Google’s first entry into the wireless industry,
will work only on the company’s Nexus 6 phones and be hosted through Sprint Corp
and T-Mobile’s networks, Google said in a statement. Read more
[REUTERS.COM]
SMARTPHONE NEWS: Blackberry Would Team With Apple On Security. BlackBerry
(BBRY, Tech30) may be a shell of its former self, but one area it still wields
significant sway is security. The Defense Department uses BlackBerry devices for its
security advantages, and President Obama even has his own super-charged
BlackBerry. Read more
[MONEY.CNN.COM]

Personal Tech
CHROME EXTENSIONS: Google’s New Chrome Extension Warns You if You’re Being
Phished. People trying to steal your information through carefully crafted phishing
websites is nothing new, but Google actively warning you if you fall foul of these
attempts certainly is. Read more
[THENEXTWEB.COM]
TWO FOR ONE: Your Windows 10 Phone Is A Tiny Desktop Computer With
Continuum. Microsoft just demoed its 2-in-1 Continuum feature on a Windows 10
phone giving the mobile device the ability to become a really tiny desktop
computer. Continuum adjusts the UI of Windows 10 on a device from desktop to
tablet mode based on what’s plugged into it. If you plug a keyboard and mouse into
a tablet or phone, it goes into desktop mode. Read more
[ENDGADGET.COM]

Technology News
WIFI EXPLOIT: Security Flaw Lets Attackers Cripple Your iPhone And There’s No Way
To Stop Them. Wondering how difficult it is for attackers to cripple your iPhone?
The answer isn’t going to make you happy — in a nutshell, all the have to do is
create a Wi-Fi network. That’s right, thanks to a newly detailed security flaw in iOS,
malicious hackers can send an iPhone into an endless reboot loop simply by
creating a Wi-Fi network. Read more
[BGR.COM]
ADD-ONS: Disney Is Using Ultrasonic Sound-Waves To Develop Next Generation
Smartphone Accessories. Companies and researchers are always trying to find
innovative ways to expand the smartphones and tablets we use everyday, whether
it’s a new app or some kind of hardware accessory. And now, a team of researchers
from Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research are leveraging ultrasonic
audio coming from our devices in order to develop new kinds of interactive mobile
controllers. Read more
[CSOONLINE.COM]

Technology News
TECH AND PAY: How Technology Has Affected Wages for the Last 200 Years. Today’s
great paradox is that we feel the impact of technology everywhere — in our cars,
our phones, the supermarket, the doctor’s office — but not in our paychecks. Read
more
[HBR.ORG]
TECH JOBS: Why People Who Put Data Scientist On Their Linkedin Profiles Earn
More Money. As the White House’s first chief data scientist, Patil — widely credited
with coining the term “data scientist” — has become a high-profile champion of the
Obama administration’s open data efforts. The possibilities are seemingly endless
for data science, Patil explained during his speech. And a lot of that has to do with
ambiguous nature of the role. Read more
[NEXTGOV.COM]

Technology News
STRATEGY: How A Jacksonville Tech Firm Doubled Its Workforce In Less Than A Year.
What do you do when you’re a Jacksonville tech company competing in the same
niche space as a Panama City tech company that’s going under? Read more
[BIZJOURNALS.COM]

Enterprise News
MOBILEGEDDON: Is It Time To Buy Your Own Server? 50 years ago, Gordon Moore,
the co-founder of Intel, observed that the number of transistors on integrated
circuits had doubled each year since the integrated circuit had been invented. His
prediction that this would continue into the foreseeable future has been proven to
be more or less right. Experts predict that this is going to continue for at least
another two decades. Read more
[ITPROPORTAL.COM]
SALESFORCE RESEARCH: Wearables in the Enterprise are Driving Improved Business
Performance. A new research report, “Putting Wearables to Work: Insights on
Wearable Technology in Business,” which confirms that, as one of the hottest
segments in tech, wearables are seen as a strategic platform for improving business
performance and are an expanding area of investment. Read more
[MONEY.CNN.COM]

Enterprise News
BIG CHALLENGES: Making Sense Of Mobile Application Integration. Architects tend
not to realize that mobile application integration is far different from traditional
application integration. Learn how to manage integration in a different way. Read
more
[SEARCHSOA.TECHTARGET.COM]
INTEGRATION PLATFORM: How iPaaS Is Changing Enterprise Integration. Ovum
discovered that iPaaS is gaining acceptance and broader adoption in the enterprise.
Of the nine vendors featured, six have already supported enterprise-scale
integration initiatives involving three or more use cases. Read more

Enterprise News
AI INTEGRATION: Enterprises Learn Artificial Intelligence Lessons. In enterprises,
the integration of AI into a growing number of software tools, powerful processors,
and huge amounts of data will generate $11.1 billion in sales of AI systems for
enterprise applications by 2024, compared with $202.5 million this year. Read more
[ENTERPRISETECH.COM]

Configuration Management
VIRTUAL DESKTOPS: Containers Are the Next Game Changer. VMware announced
two new open-source projects based on container technology. Project Photon is a
lightweight Linux distribution designed for running containers, and Project
Lightwave’s an orchestration and management tool built on technology from
Pivotal. This, plus Microsoft’s recent announcement of Windows Server Nano with
container support, sends a clear message about the future. Read more
[VIRTUALIZATIONREVIEW.COM]
SHADOW IT: Watch Out For The Products That Have Snuck In Behind Your Back. The
mention of shadow IT can produce beads of sweat on the brow of any
knowledgeable IT staff member. For those who do not know, the term covers any
company systems and services that are not procured by the IT department. The toil
and trouble of a single shadow IT occurrence can cause a headache that sticks with
the company for years. Read more
[THEREGISTER.COM]

Configuration Management
***IRTUAL DESKTOPS: Containers Are the Next Game Changer. VMware announced
two new open-source projects based on container technology. Project Photon is a
lightweight Linux distribution designed for running containers, and Project
Lightwave’s an orchestration and management tool built on technology from
Pivotal. This, plus Microsoft’s recent announcement of Windows Server Nano with
container support, sends a clear message about the future. Read more
[VIRTUALIZATIONREVIEW.COM]
SHADOW IT: Watch Out For The Products That Have Snuck In Behind Your Back. The
mention of shadow IT can produce beads of sweat on the brow of any
knowledgeable IT staff member. For those who do not know, the term covers any
company systems and services that are not procured by the IT department. The toil
and trouble of a single shadow IT occurrence can cause a headache that sticks with
the company for years. Read more
[THEREGISTER.COM]

Incident Response
SURVEY FINDINGS: ‘Golden Hour’ Incident Response Agility. Do you really need to
worry about targeted attacks? This new Tackling Incident Detection and Response
survey found that, depending on the size of your business, you are probably
responding to one to three incidents per week. Read more
[DARKREADING.COM]
DETECTION TOOLS: How IDT Corp. Automates Incident Response. Some types of
cyberattacks such as those designed to knock websites offline are overt and easy to
identify. But some of the most devastating attacks come with alerts that seem more
like whispers. Those are the ones that Golan Ben-Oni, chief security officer at
telecom and payments provider IDT Corp.IDT +0.57%, worries about. Read more
[BLOGS.WSJ.COM]

Incident Response
NEW OFFERINGS: Symantec Expands Incident Response Services Globally. Given the
sophisticated nature of the threat landscape, organizations need to change their
security strategy. Symantec has launched two Incident Response offerings to steer
customers away from a high-cost reactive approach toward a more proactive,
programmatic one. Read more
[MARKETWATCH.COM]

Incident Response
TECH INNOVATIONS: Uber Adds New Incident Response Teams Following Safety
Concerns. Ride-sharing company Uber said it has formed response teams to address
safety issues across the world, amid increasing concerns about the security of its
passengers and drivers. The company, whose mobile app lets users hail taxis, has
been dogged by controversies surrounding its business practices and safety policies,
as it has grown rapidly around the world in recent months. Find out more
[HUFFINGTONPOST.COM]

Continuous Monitoring
RSA CONFERENCE 2015: Continuous Monitoring Of Perimeter And Internal IT Assets.
Qualys announced that its popular Qualys Continuous Monitoring (CM) solution for
the perimeter now includes internal monitoring capabilities enabling organizations to
proactively monitor and get real-time alerts for critical internal IT assets such as
desktops, servers and other devices. Read more
[NET-SECURITY.COM]
CYBER DEFENSE: Why Continuous Monitoring And JIE Make A Perfect Match. With its
ongoing effort toward a Joint Information Environment, the Defense Department is
experiencing something that’s extremely familiar to the enterprise world: a merger.
The ambitious effort to consolidate communications, services, computing and
enterprise services into a single platform is very similar to businesses coming
together and integrating disparate divisions into a cohesive whole. Read more
[DEFENSESYSTEMS.COM]

Continuous Monitoring
*** SA CONFERENCE 2015: Continuous Monitoring Of Perimeter And Internal IT
Assets. Qualys announced that its popular Qualys Continuous Monitoring (CM)
solution for the perimeter now includes internal monitoring capabilities enabling
organizations to proactively monitor and get real-time alerts for critical internal IT
assets such as desktops, servers and other devices. Read more
[NET-SECURITY.COM]
CYBER DEFENSE: Why Continuous Monitoring And JIE Make A Perfect Match. With its
ongoing effort toward a Joint Information Environment, the Defense Department is
experiencing something that’s extremely familiar to the enterprise world: a merger.
The ambitious effort to consolidate communications, services, computing and
enterprise services into a single platform is very similar to businesses coming
together and integrating disparate divisions into a cohesive whole. Read more
[DEFENSESYSTEMS.COM]

Continuity Planning
NEW POLICY: State Regulators To Require Continuity Plans. State securities regulators
have advanced a model rule outlining policies investment advisers should have in
place to respond to natural disasters or the death or incapacitation of an executive.
Read more
[INVESTMENTNEWS.COM]
PLANNING: Use Business Continuity To Boost Your Corporate Governance Process.
Business continuity is typically viewed in the context of responding to specific events,
as opposed to a tool for effectively managing an organization. But BC activities can
add value to the corporate governance process. Read more
[TECHTARGET.COM]

From the Blue Mountain Data Systems Blog
Three-Dimensional Governance for the CIO
https://www.bluemt.com/three-dimensional-governance-for-the-cio
7 Reasons to Take Control of IT Incidents
https://www.bluemt.com/7-reasons-to-take-control-of-it-incidents/
Breach Mitigation Response Time Too Long, Survey Says
https://www.bluemt.com/breach-mitigation-response-time-too-long-survey-
says/
Six Tactics for Cyberdefense
https://www.bluemt.com/six-tactics-for-cyberdefense/

Feds Report Mixed Responses to Shared Services
https://www.bluemt.com/feds-report-mixed-responses-to-shared-services
Federal Employees Are Not Security Experts
https://www.bluemt.com/federal-employees-are-not-security-experts
Survival Guide for Network Administrators
https://www.bluemt.com/survival-guide-for-network-administrators
DBaaS: OpenStack Trove Changes DB Management
https://www.bluemt.com/dbaas-openstack-trove-changes-db-management

Help Wanted: Certified Cybersecurity Professionals
https://www.bluemt.com/help-wanted-certified-cybersecurity-professionals
Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center Preview
https://www.bluemt.com/cyber-threat-intelligence-integration-center-preview/
Cloud Moves in 1-2-3
https://www.bluemt.com/cloud-moves-in-1-2-3/
Change Management for Disaster Recovery
https://www.bluemt.com/change-management-for-disaster-recovery/

Jeffersonian Advice For C-Suite Career Advancement
https://www.bluemt.com/jeffersonian-advice-for-c-suite-career-advancement/
Ways To Survive The “Mobile-Pocalypse”
https://www.bluemt.com/ways-to-survive-the-mobile-pocalypse/
Microsoft Cloud Services Receive FedRAMP Authority to Operate
https://www.bluemt.com/microsoft-cloud-services-receive-fedramp-authority-
to-operate/
Hiring Pentesters? Here Are 10 Things You Need to Know
https://www.bluemt.com/hiring-pentesters-here-are-10-things-you-need-to-
know/

Home Router Malware Alert
https://www.bluemt.com/home-router-malware-alert/
Threat Model Deconstruction
https://www.bluemt.com/threat-model-deconstruction/
Business Email Scam Nets $214 Million
https://www.bluemt.com/business-email-scam-nets-214-million/
How to Prevent Unauthorized Software from Taking Over Your Organization
https://www.bluemt.com/the-cios-guide-to-happy-end-users-2/

Digital Marketing Predictions for 2015
https://www.bluemt.com/digital-marketing-predictions-for-2015/
SDN: Network Administrator’s Friend or Foe?
https://www.bluemt.com/sdn-network-administrators-friend-or-foe/
Mobile Payments: A Must for Federal Agencies
https://www.bluemt.com/mobile-payments-a-must-for-federal-agencies/
Soft Skills Are A Must-Have For Careers In IT
https://www.bluemt.com/soft-skills-are-a-must-have-for-careers-in-it/

Security Risks Most Prevalent in Younger Workers
https://www.bluemt.com/security-risks-most-prevalent-in-younger-workers/
The Security World’s Maturation
https://www.bluemt.com/the-security-worlds-maturation/
Data Breach Concerns Keep CISOs Up At Night
https://www.bluemt.com/data-breach-concerns-keep-cisos-up-at-night/
Personalized Govt Equals Instant Gratification for Citizens
https://www.bluemt.com/personalized-govt-equals-instant-gratification-for-
citizens/

People-Centric Security
https://www.bluemt.com/people-centric-security/
Pentagon Tries BYOD To Strike Work/Life Balance
https://www.bluemt.com/pentagon-tries-byod-to-strike-worklife-balance/
Open Source Model Considered for MS Windows
https://www.bluemt.com/open-source-model-considered-for-ms-windows/
Open Internet: To Be or Not to Be?
https://www.bluemt.com/open-internet-to-be-or-not-to-be/

Malware Stays A Step Ahead Infecting One Third of Websites
https://www.bluemt.com/malware-stays-a-step-ahead-infecting-one-third-of-
websites/
Machine-Generated Data: Potential Goldmine for the CIO
https://www.bluemt.com/machine-generated-data-potential-goldmine-for-the-
cio/
Government Legacy Programs: Reuse vs. Replacement
https://www.bluemt.com/government-legacy-programs-reuse-vs-replacement/
It Takes a Whole Village to Protect Networks and Systems
https://www.bluemt.com/it-takes-a-whole-village-to-protect-networks-and-
systems/

Governance For the CIO
https://www.bluemt.com/governance-for-the-cio/
Help Desk Consolidation – Lessons Learned
https://www.bluemt.com/help-desk-consolidation-lessons-learned/
One Year Later, Companies Still Vulnerable to Heartbleed
https://www.bluemt.com/one-year-later-companies-still-vulnerable-to-
heartbleed/
Federal Projects Cultivate Worker Passion
https://www.bluemt.com/federal-projects-cultivate-worker-passion-2/

ABOUT US
Blue Mountain Data Systems Inc.
Blue Mountain Data Systems Inc. is dedicated to application
and systems development, electronic document management,
IT security support, and the automation of workflow processes.
Read more about our experience here:
>> http://bluemt.com/experience

Recent Experience
U.S. Dept. of Labor
Employee Benefits Security Administration
1994 to Present
Responsible to the Office of Technology and Information Systems for information
systems architecture, planning, applications development, networking,
administration and IT security, supporting the enforcement of Title I of the
Employee Retirement Income Security Act — ERISA. Within the EBSA, Blue
Mountain is responsible for design, development and support for its various
enforcement database management systems, as well as all case tracking and
customer service inquiry systems. Blue Mountain also provides IT security services
to the EBSA, in the form of FISMA Assessment and Authorization, System Security
Plans, Risk and vulnerability assessments, monitoring and investigation support.

MANAGEMENT
Paul T. Vesely
Founder, President, CEO and Principal Architect
Mr. Vesely is a recognized thought leader in systems
architecture and delivery, having designed and
delivered many enterprise wide information and
document management solutions. Mr. Vesely’s history
includes 33 years experience in the information
systems industry, with Unisys, Grumman, PRC and a
host of clients in both government and private sectors.

CONTACT US
Contact Us Today to Discuss Your Next IT Project
HEADQUARTERS
366 Victory Drive
Herndon, VA 20170
PHONE 703-502-3416
FAX 703-745-9110
EMAIL
paul@bluemt.com
WEB
https://www.bluemt.com

Tech Update Summary from Blue Mountain Data Systems June 2015

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Tech Update Summary from Blue Mountain Data Systems June 2015

Similar to Tech Update Summary from Blue Mountain Data Systems June 2015 (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Tech Update Summary from Blue Mountain Data Systems June 2015