On Friday, October 24, I was on the Federal News Countdown, hosted by Francis Rose, along with Jenny Mattingley, director of government affairs for Shaw, Bransford and Roth. You can hear the show, and see a picture of an old, bald guy standing next to Jenny, here.
The format of the show is each guest talks about their third most important article, then their second and finally their most important article of the week. Both guests will comment on each other’s second and top articles.
My third most important article was:
Cloud emerges as essential component in defense, intel operations from the Federal Times.
It was interesting to me that even DoD and the intelligence communities have recognized that they need to keep up to date with cloud implementations. Even though they segregate their networks, this was a move that would not have been considered five years ago. It shows that in a very short time software development has radically changed. It also is likely that this reflects the different attitudes toward such computer architectures from younger staff.
My second most important article was:
U.S. government probes medical devices for possible cyber flaws from Reuters.
The article discusses how the Department of Homeland Security is looking into security flaws in medical devices including such devices as infusion pumps and implantable heart devices. Toward the end of the article mentioned how a cyber researcher who was utilizing a computerized insulin pump stopped using it; a step not recommended by medical professionals who feel the positive health results outweigh the risks.
What is happening is that almost everything around us is starting to have wireless status connectivity allowing us to pretty easily take actions (often, of course, with an app) that can control all of these devices. There are two problems however. First many of these devices were developed without thinking through the fact that they might have wireless capability added to them. Thus the developers often have not thought through security implications. Second, related to the first problem, each of these devices become new ways for hackers to penetrate your network. While I was the US Department of Transportation, through 2009, we were aware that hackers could use our multi-function printers to penetrate our network, now the number of devices that can be used has multiplied.
My most important article was:
Municipal sensor networks track citizen behavior for study, raises privacy concerns, a summary in FierceBigData of an article by Elizabeth Dwoskin in the Wall Street Journal.
The specific article talked about a New York University study where a professor measured when people in Manhatten went to sleep by taking pictures of windows. The point I was trying to make however was broader, the increasing lack of privacy about almost everything we do. Our cell phones are tracked, if we have EZ Pass for highways that is tracked, when we sign-on and do searches that is tracked, and so on and so on. The issue of being able to control your information is becoming increasingly a policy issue, in particular in Europe right now where the EU has been pushing Google to allow citizens to potentially delete data about themselves.