MOBILE APPLICATIONS
OPINION: It’s Time for IT to Take Control of Mobile Apps. IT is seeing a very dangerous collision of two trends: BYOD and mobile apps. IT’s job is to protect corporate data – and it’s an app download away from failing. Read more
[COMPUTERWORLD.COM]
USDA: Unveils Mobile Application for Its Government Ethics Content. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue officially unveiled a new mobile app Wednesday for agency employees – a simple ethics guide called “USDA Ethics.” The app promises to answer employees’ ethics questions “on the go” with short articles on ethics requirements, easy-to-access forms and even a video library of ethics training content. Read the rest
[FEDSCOOP.COM]
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: Startups Are Finally Taking On Food Stamps. Felicia Graybill uses her smartphone for everything: sending email, checking Facebook, and even monitoring her bank account. But for years, when the 28-year-old Brooklyn mom went to check on her food stamps benefits she might as well have been using a landline. Reviewing her balance required dialing into a hotline and entering her entire card number. All she could access was the sum of her funds – there was no way of breaking down how and when she’d spent the money. Thanks to new trends in civic technology, that’s beginning to change. Young tech workers have increasingly noticed the wide-open opportunity to bring disruption to outdated social programs. With a user base of nearly 43 million Americans, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides food stamps, is ripe for innovation. Take Graybill. Now she uses FreshEBT, an app launched by mobile software startup Propel. The app allows her to check her balance on her phone and organize her budget around local deals using an online shopping list. Find out more
[WIRED.COM]
HEALTH: Mobile Apps for Diabetes Patients Need Careful Review. Diabetes patients who use smartphone applications to manage their condition should know that not all apps are reliable, researchers say. “We have more than 165,000 health and fitness apps in app stores right now and little control over what’s being published,” said study author Francois Modave of the University of Florida in Gainesville. “App manufacturers want to produce good information, but there’s no oversight from any health organization or agency,” Modave told Reuters Health. Approximately 29 million Americans have diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Modave and colleagues used the Mobile App Rating Scale to analyze and rank the top free apps for diabetes management. They also looked at the number of diabetes-specific management tasks that the apps included, such as physical activity, nutrition, blood glucose testing, medication and insulin dosage, health feedback, and education. Find out more about the study results
[REUTERS.COM]
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NOW ON SLIDESHARE: Tech Update Summary from Blue Mountain Data Systems August 2017 https://www.slideshare.net/BMDS3416/tech-update-summary-from-blue-mountain-data-systems-august-2017.
IT SECURITY SUPPORT: Blue Mountain Data Systems is actively involved in implementing FISMA and NIST standards with Federal Civilian Agencies. Due to our extensive experience in this area, Blue Mountain has developed processes and organizational techniques to help ensure security deliverables are completed on time, and performed in the most efficient manner possible. We ensure that NIST-800-53 control requirements are treated consistently during definition, analysis, implementation, auditing, and reporting phases of a system. Find out more about Blue Mountain Data Systems IT Security Support Services. Call us at 703-502-3416.
BLUE MOUNTAIN DATA SYSTEMS HAS THE EXPERIENCE: 1994 to Present – U.S. Dept. of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration. 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. Read more.
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