IT SECURITY
PRIVACY INVASION: Drones Are Intercepting Cell Phone Signals in L.A. Even before the Federal Aviation Administration unveiled its proposed regulations for commercial drone flights in the United States last week, one company was already at work, using drones to collect data from unsuspecting citizens in Los Angeles. Read more
[FORBES.COM]
VULNERABILITIES: Hackin’ At The Car Wash, Yeah. Drive-through car washes can be hacked via the Internet, to wreak physical damage or to get a free wash for your ride. Turns out those drive-through car washes have public Web interfaces that easily can be accessed online, and used to cause physical damage, manipulate or sabotage mechanical operations, or just score a free wash for your vehicle. Read more
[DARKREADING.COM]
FOR THE CTO, CIO & CISO
MALWARE: New Tools Can Detect Hidden Malware. We tested new security appliances from Damballa, Lancope and LightCyber that are designed to detect the latest cyber-attacks by monitoring network traffic and identifying when a piece of malware is communicating back to its command and control center. Read more
[CIO.COM]
CIO INNOVATION: The CIO Dilemma: What New Surveys Say About IT’s Declining Strategic Role. With the rise in the importance of information technology (IT) for all organizations, you would think that the stature of the function and that of its head—the Chief Information Officer (CIO)—will also rise. Instead, two new surveys report that IT and CIOs are trending downward. Read more
[FORBES.COM]
OPERATION SYSTEM SECURITY: Microsoft: Biometrics Are The Future Of Windows 10 Security. With the use of passwords coming under increased scrutiny, Microsoft is taking steps to move beyond them in Windows 10. Its biggest move: Joining the FIDO (Fast Identity Online) Alliance and adding support for the biometrics technology in the upcoming upgrade of the OS, which has been slated to ship this year. Read more
[CSOONLINE.COM]
FEDERAL, STATE & LOCAL GOVERNMENT
PUBLIC SAFETY: Baltimore Weighs the Hidden Cost of Police Body Cameras. he total cost of body cameras in the first year alone would range from $5.5 million to $7.9 million.. Much of the debate about whether police officers should be required to wear body cameras has focused on the need to increase accountability and transparency. Read more
[STATETECHMAGAZINE.COM]
WORKFORCE: Hiring spree: Agencies adding 72,000 employees in 2015. Agencies bouncing back from sequestration cuts and years of hiring freezes are hiring more than 72,000 federal employees in 2015, according to figures from the Office of Management and Budget. Read more
[FEDERALTIMES.COM]
REMOTE WORKERS: When Telework Really Works. In the nine-month experiment, which involved employees of the company’s call center, staff was divided into two groups — one that continued doing their regular job at the office, and another that did their regular work from home. Read more
[FCW.COM]
DATABASES
OPEN SOURCE: Security Gaps Discovered in 39,890 Online Databases. Due to a misconfigured open source database upon which millions of online stores and platforms from all over the world base their services, anyone had the ability to call up or modify several million pieces of customer data online including names, addresses and e-mails. According to the Center for IT-Security, Privacy and Accountability (CISPA) in Saarbrücken, Germany, three of its students were able to demonstrate this vulnerability for 40,000 online databases in both Germany and France. Read more
[SCIENTIFICCOMPUTING.COM]
NoSQL: 3 Security Pain Points NoSQL Must Remedy. Word broke recently that 40,000 instances of MongoDB that were found to be almost completely unsecured, among them a database for a French telecom with millions of customer records.
Find out more
[INFOWORLD.COM]
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APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT: Blue Mountain Data Systems is dedicated to Application Development and Systems Integration for Federal Civilian Agencies, Document Management Systems that help in the preparation, scanning, indexing, categorizing and quality control of millions of pages of paper documents to electronic format and the Automation of Workflow Processes. Call us at 703-502-3416.
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