David Valdez Posts

The world of cybersecurity continues to evolve whereby the perpetrators of cyber crimes are becoming emboldened in a way we have not seen before, and the U.S. government’s response to these crimes also has evolved in unprecedented ways.Last month the hacker groups Lulsec and Anonymous joined efforts “to launch 'Operation Anti-Security' or 'AntiSec' to expose corrupt, abusive governments . . . [their] top priority is to steal and leak any classified government information, including email spools ...

Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack stated during a hearing this week that “we are not going to take it anymore,” referring to her efforts to pass comprehensive data notification breach reform, in response to the recent announcements by Sony and Epsilon of its major data breaches. As Congresswoman and Chairwoman of the Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee, she also stated that the recent massive data breaches convinced her for the need to introduce the Secure and Fortify Electronic Data Act ...

Those in Washington know that the best way to get steam behind a public policy issue is by building on the momentum of a national news cycle. Well this week the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade held a hearing entitled “The Threat of Data Theft to American Consumers”.The hearing was in response to Sony’s announcement on April 26 of a massive data breach caused by computer hackers that resulted in the theft of 77 million user accounts. What caused an even grea ...

Last week Senators Kerry and McCain introduced the “Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights”.  The purpose of the bill is to impose stricter guidelines for the collection, storage and transmission of consumer data.  If enacted into law the bill would require the following: Companies that collect consumer data would have requirements for ensuring that the information is protected and secure. Companies would have to provide more robust notice requirements prior to sharing consumer information with third ...

At the direction of Vivek Kundra, chief information officer for the United States, the National Institute for Science and Technology (NIST) is pushing the federal government to the cloud computing finish line with the near completion of a roadmap to assist federal agencies moving to a cloud computing environment.NIST is helping to translate mission requirements into technical portability, interoperability, reliability, maintainability and security requirements.  The roadmap document is the mecha ...

The Obama Administration’s Small Business Jobs Act is kicking in $5M for a small business mentoring program. The Small Business Administration is providing grants ranging from $250K to $500K for organizations to provide support and mentoring for small businesses.  The deadline for submitting grant applications is April 11, and the grant recipients will be announced soon after the deadline. The program is open to profit and non-profit organizations that have at least three years of national exper ...

The National Institute for Science and technology announced its next cloud workshop scheduled for April 7-8 in Gaithersburg, MD. Last year NIST convened a series of workshops on cloud computing to develop a roadmap for federal agencies to migrate to the cloud.Specifically, NIST stated, “Federal CIOs need and want answers to practical operational questions. How does an agency protect its data if it doesn’t physically control the hardware and software used to store, transport and process the data? ...

Yesterday, the Senate Science Commerce and Transportation Committee held a hearing on the “State of Online Privacy”.  This was the first of two heating hearings focused on whether additional legislation was needed to protect consumers from how companies manage consumer data collected online. There were was testimony from several private, not-for-profit and federal agency stakeholders. Senator Kerry plans to introduce a bill sometime soon, which he hopes will solve several issues: Websites sellin ...

As national policymakers observed the protests in Egypt unfold, an interesting fact emerged.  Egypt’s President Mubarak ordered the utility companies and Internet Service Providers to restrict Internet traffic, ultimately shutting down access to the Internet.  Consequently, Egyptian citizens had no access to social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook or Google that were being used to organize and mobilize protesters.Interestingly enough, on February 15, Senators Lieberman and Carper intro ...

Does the Department of Defense have a role in the event of a major cyber attack on critical infrastructure?This is the question that Rep. Mac Thornberry, chair of the Subcommittee on Emerging Threat and Capabilities, raised.  Today, the Congressman convened a group of cybersecurity experts from academia, not-for-profits and the private sector to assess the vulnerabilities due to cyber vandalism, theft, crimes and warfare of the country’s critical infrastructure. Although the panel of experts off ...