How Machine Learning is Helping Combat Insider Threats
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Close the Data Center, Skip the TIC – How One Agency Bought Big Into Cloud
The International Trade Administration’s leap into cloud services cut costs and improved service – in part by redefining the meaning and boundaries of the agency’s networks.
Why a Long-Term Data Strategy is Essential to Stopping Insider Threats
Insider threat protection programs accumulate massive storage volumes in order to monitor and track user activity over time. What data organizations choose to collect – and how long they choose to retain – depends on its risk tolerance and how much it’s willing to spend.
Automated License Plate Readers on the U.S. Border
U.S. Customs and Border Protection are planning to upgrade automated license plate readers to help monitor traffic on both the northern and southern borders. As it turns out, the recognition technology is reaping rewards and helping reduce cross-border crimes.
Wanted: Metrics for Measuring Cyber Performance and Effectiveness
Intense worries about cybersecurity mean system owners are stacking up cyber tools to help protect their organizations, often duplicating features and capabilities in the process. The problem: There’s no sure way to measure the effectiveness of one tool over another.
Homeland Security
What's New
Proactive Resilience: The Future of Cybersecurity
Today’s state of the art in cybersecurity is operational resilience – the ability to keep operating in the midst of a disruptive attack. Tomorrow’s state of the art is what Carnegie Mellon CERT’s Summer Fowler calls “prosillience” – the ability to anticipate and adapt before disruptions strike. Here’s how we’ll get from now to then.
OneNet vs. IC ITE vs. JIE: 3 Ways to Consolidate Fed Networks
President Trump’s Cyber Executive Order calls for consolidating federal networks into a single architecture. Here’s how three parts of government are already doing just that.
How Machine Learning is Helping Combat Insider Threats
The massive volumes of security that data agencies now collect to root out potential insider threats can overwhelm resources and complicate real-time search and analytics. Are new tools needed to help agencies pinpoint insider anomalous behavior and patterns?
Talking Tech Videos
What We’re Reading
Trump Not Rushing to Find a Permanent Head for DHS
A month after former Homeland Security secretary John Kelly decamped for the White House, President Donald Trump has yet to formally interview any potential candidates to replace the retired general as the head of the department.
That’s the latest from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. In a recent report GAO declares that a decade’s worth of effort to pare the use of SSNs in government has had only “limited success.”
GAO To Agencies: Stop Using Social Security Numbers For Everything
Federal agencies continue to over-collect, over-use and over-display Social Security numbers, leading to the an unnecessarily high risk of identity theft.
That’s the latest from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. In a recent report GAO declares that a decade’s worth of effort to pare the use of SSNs in government has had only “limited success.”
GIS, Mobile-Alert Tech Shine During Eclipse
Cities, counties and states along the path of totality during the historic eclipse turned to data to ensure that the millions of people who followed that track stayed safe. Governments used GIS and messaging systems to alert area residents and tourists to traffic congestion, road closures and lodging information and notify first responders of needs for emergency response.
Washington, Not Silicon Valley, Leads The Way in Cybersecurity
It’s a common trope that government has a lot to learn from Silicon Valley when it comes to technology. But in cybersecurity, Washington is leading the way in many respects.
The Defense Department Will Soon Use More Secure Email
The U.S. Department of Defense will soon start sending more secure emails.
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), the body in charge of the Pentagon’s email, said it plans to enable stronger encryption on all emails by July 2018.
In Quest to Replace Common Access Card, DoD Starts Testing Behavior-Based Authentication
A year after then-chief information officer Terry Halvorsen first publicly floated the idea of killing DoD’s Common Access Card in favor of a collection of more flexible authentication technologies, the Pentagon is beginning to test drive at least one of the potential replacements for the CAC.
Last week, the Defense Innovation Unit-Experimental reached an agreement with Plurilock Technologies, a Victoria, British Columbia-based firm that holds several patents on behavior-based authentication (or, “behaviour-based,” to our friends to the north).
Local Governments Focus on Cybersecurity After Attacks
Terri Bettinger paid close attention to the recent cyberattacks on the websites of Ohio government agencies, banks and other businesses. She hoped to learn lessons to better defend the information she oversees.
Bettinger is the chief information officer for Franklin County and head of its Data Center, which collects, stores and protects government data from property tax bills to court and medical records. She knows the system will be hacked.
DHS needs better information security practices, audit says
The Department of Homeland Security needs to up its game on information security, according to an audit released last week.
Private sector auditor KPMG conducted after-hours walkthroughs of employee workstations in the department’s Office of Financial Management and the Office of the Chief Information Officer, and found sensitive information — like passwords — left out and unattended.
Without Latest Version of WIN-T, Army Commanders Will Be Easy Targets in Next War
For the U.S. Army, the global war on terror is beginning to look like the good old days. It was a long fight that is not yet over, and as usual, the Army has suffered most of the joint-force casualties, but at least terrorists don’t have long-range fires, tactical aircraft, heavy armor, sophisticated cyber weapons or electronic-warfare capabilities.