GCN Lab Reviews

• 5 smart choices in smart phones

  The GCN Lab tests five new models, including one with 4G capabilities, and finds they have a lot for offer on-the-job users. Android phones come out on top.

• Rocsafe drive weds portability and security

  The Rocsafe MX Rocstor is a FIPS-certified, 500G portable hard drive with two-factor authentication.

• Redfly swats tiny cell phone screens

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GCN Lab Impressions

• Battery technology gets recharged

  

  Developments in battery technology may be unknown, but they are happening every day.

• Open source's roots in the 19th century
• How to trick Windows XP SP2 into thinking it's SP3

More Impressions

Tech Product News

• Can you trust your data recovery vendor?

  Pressed for time and money, agencies are often lax about vetting third-party data recovery companies. New NIST guidance seeks to correct the problem.

• What customers want from data recovery companies -- besides their data back
• Social media helps NRC combat brain drain

More Tech Product News

Phil Piemonte on Gov Careers

• 'Best places' survey tapped 263,000 feds...Now what do the REST of you think?

  The results are in, folks—and topping this year’s list of best places to work in the federal government (among major agencies) are the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (No.1), the Government Accountability Office (No. 2) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (No. 3).

• How secure is your facility?
• If you didn't get that federal job, read this ...

More on your federal career

Interviews

• How Google attacks changed the security game

  Targeted attacks that exploit zero-day vulnerabilities add a new layer of risk in the challenge of securing information systems and critical infrastructure, says McAfee Chief Technology Officer George Kurtz, who took part in the investigation of the Google attacks.

More Interviews

Another View from Industry Thought Leaders

• Cities add value to networks with new services

  

  Each time a municipal services network takes on a new city service or application to support, it adds that much more value to the original network investment, writes Chip Yager, director of Motorla's Mesh Networks Product Group.

• Ethernet: An answer to federal networking needs

  A trip back to the future, led by Connection-Oriented Ethernet, could help agencies overcome many IP vulnerabilities, says David Gutierrez, an optical transport product strategist at Fujitsu.

• When 'Googling it' isn't enough

  Federal agencies must become better informed about the drawbacks of relying on Web search engine technology internally for mission-critical applications, argues Johannes Scholtes, chief strategy officer at ZyLAB.

Guest Columnists

CyberEye | Bill Jackson

• Malware's role in fatal 2008 air crash

  

  Contrary to some reports, malware did not cause the 2008 Spanair crash that killed 154 people. But an infected computer could have contributed to failures in the airline maintenance system that might have helped prevent the crash.

Editor's Desk | Wyatt Kash

• Emergency crews get the message on social media

  Emergency agencies across the country, from small cities to the state and federal government, are putting social media and Web 2.0 tools to effective — and sometimes life-saving — use as complements to established communications channels.

Internaut | Shawn P. McCarthy

• Think you can just jump into the cloud? Think again.

  

  Newly arriving services must be able to interchange data with existing systems during a transition to cloud computing. And none of it can happen unless agencies have a SOA that can support much more than just Web-facing applications.

CISO Perspectives | by (ISC)2

• How to allow social media without getting 'Koobfaced'

  Federal CISOs face with the paradox of how to facilitate the use of Web 2.0 technologies amid increasing cyber-threat vectors. The current practice is largely based on "binary" decision-making -- "allow-all" or "deny-all," with the latter being the de facto standard. But there are practical approaches to achieving a risk-based middle-ground.

Reality Check | Mike Daconta

• With info sharing, context is as important as content

  

  Context is so critical that its implications are cropping up in more than a half-dozen areas of data architecture, such as process monitoring, business glossaries, master data management, metadata catalogs, information exchanges, data warehousing and much more, Reality Check columnist Michael Daconta writes.