By Marcus Williams

Some hot topics we are tracking:

Data Mining Taken to a New Level
During a recent expo Raytheon, the 5th largest defense contractor, displayed how their Rapid Information Overlay Technology could collect data a on user.  RIOT was designed to search through well known social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare to gather information that could be  linked to a person’s everyday activity by the hour. Read More

Budget Cuts that target Data Centers Across the Nation
The imitative to close 400 data centers by October is predicted to save 5 billion dollars by 2015.  Consolidating  government data centers and utilizing the cloud could decrease in cost and increase in productivity over the next two years.  Read More

Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community Searching For A Similar Solution
Both entities are constructing a comprehensive approach to share data between different agencies.  There is still one problem.  According to INSA “unlike the intelligence community’s architecture, Defense’s project is decentralized in that there is no planned acquisition strategy or budget and is funded through military organization that opt in”. President Obama is expected to sign an executive order allowing the sharing of cybersecurity intelligence among  defense contractors and critical industries. Read More

The Industry Control System s Are Getting A New Security Makeover
President Obama recently signed a voluntarily mandate asking security standards to be addressed in federal contracts to fend off cyberattacks.   In 2011, the military installed a ICS network which operated a central control panel within a state of art building.  Someone plugged in a printer and the network went down within minutes.  Safeguards are now being discussed to sensor and scan an ICS network for abnormal activity.  Read More

Is It Time for an Upgrade to the Department of Veterans Affairs Database Management System?
The government has spent $263 million dollars on a system to help streamline the educational benefits a veteran will receive.  “The processing system has over 1,600 calculation rules to determine payments to individual veterans. When a problem is identified, automation stops and the claim is flagged for manual processing” Bob Brewin.  A lot of the services are outsourced to third party companies.  Read More