"The environment that started by supporting whistleblowers ... is essentially morphing into 'Gee, we as an organization need to be completely transparent, whether we want to or not,'" says Cal Slemp, managing director of Protiviti.
This week's top news and views: Conscripting cybersecurity experts to protect IT, State battles data leakage and President Obama signs bill to reorganize the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Federal agencies have until Jan. 28 to complete an assessment on how they handle confidential information, a process prompted by the WikiLeaks episode that exposed 250,000-plus diplomatic cables in November, says OMB Director Jacob Lew.
This month's most compelling news and views: top 10 government IT security stories of 2010, four components on the insider threat, pragmatic optimist Howard Schmidt and failure to enact major cybersecurity bill foreseen. And don't miss our audio week-in-review podcast by Executive Editor Eric Chabrow
From the White House to the State House, here are the 10 most important happenings in government IT security in 2010. Not everything promised at the beginning of the year came about as some had hoped. So, what else is new in government?
"The environment that started by supporting whistleblowers ... is essentially morphing into 'Gee, we as an organization need to be completely transparent, whether we want to or not,'" says Cal Slemp, managing director of Protiviti.
Thwarting the insider threat entails more than knowing an individual with access to a computer, but to recognize the synergy between the individual, organization, technology and environment, I3P Research Director Shari Lawrence Pfleeger says.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has become akin to a "cyber messiah," Hemu Nigam says. And Assange's followers have proven: "If you turn your back on our messiah, we are going to take you down."
"We will protect ourselves, our networks and our confidential correspondence through reforms like the creation of a new coordinator for cyber issues," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says.
The recent WikiLeaks release of thousands of sensitive government documents puts security leaders on notice: The breach threat is real, and no organization is immune.
Cybersecurity reform stopped in the Senate, White House unveils new way to manage federal IT that emphasizes cloud computing and data consolidation and tips on preventing a WikiLeaks-style breach.
"Until they personally suffer pain, they don't think it is something that can happen to them," says Eric Cole, an insider threat expert and SANS Institute faculty fellow.
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