In this week's Technically News: Federal Data Center Consolidation Changes Approach; BYOD: An Issue for the Army; Government CIOs Need Line-of-Sight Authority; Everyone Has a Role in Cybersecurity; Phone-DOS Attacks Target Government Offices.

The GovDefenders Cybersecurity Virtual Event, presented by DLT Solutions, is a free cyber event focused on the public sector. Join us from your desk on Wednesday, April 24 as professionals from leading IT companies, including NetApp, Symantec, ForeScout, Red Hat, Quest Software, now a part of Dell, SolarWinds, and DLT Solutions, as we discuss trends, best practices, and the future of public sector cybersecurity.

Last month the National Institute of Standards (NIST) database of software vulnerabilities, the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), was taken offline for several days because it was discovered that the web servers hosting the NVD, as well as other government databases, had been compromised by a software vulnerability. In this blog, I’ll review the problem; next week I’ll identify tools and processes that can help solve the problem.

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Top Threats Working Group today released, The Notorious Nine: Cloud Computing Top Threats in 2013 - a revised report aimed to provide organizations with up-to-date, expert-informed understanding of cloud security threats in order to make educated risk-management decisions regarding cloud adoption strategies. Today's review: Data Breaches.

This week in Technically News: Amazon Reportedly Signs $600M Cloud Deal With CIA; Data-Centric Cybersecurity in the Time of Shared Infrastructures; US Expanding Cybersecurity Watch; The Public Sector Needs Proactive Cybersecurity; Cybersecurity: Crime, Warfare, or Scaremongering.

Andrew "weev" Auernheimer will spend the next 41 months in federal prison. His crime? In 2010, he exposed a security flaw in AT&T's iPad user database, gaining access to the information of over 100,000 people. I want to ponder this question I asked myself after reading about Andrew: what role can public hackers play in government cybersecurity?

This week in Technically News: Hacked Federal Cybersecurity Databases Raise More Alarms; Is Your City the Tech Smartest; Could WW3 Start with a Cyberattack: Symantec's CTO Weighs In; Will Sequestration Compromise Agency Cybersecurity.

The White House recently released the 2012 Federal Information Security Management Act report. The report tracks agencies’ progress toward reaching the compliance targets set in 2002’s Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). While the report documents some improvements and an increase in spending (up a $1 billion from 2011), it also highlights areas of weaknesses that help illuminate the current government cybersecurity ecosystem.

In this edition: Symantec CTO: Enterprise Security Still Needs Humans; As Data Centers Consolidate, Those Remaining Need to be More Efficient; Complexity is Cybersecurity’s Real Enemy; Cybersecurity Challenges in 2013; GitHub Hires First Government Liaison.

One common misconception is that by moving applications – or IT Services – to the cloud, one somehow absolves oneself from properly managing that platform and application. Cloud platforms do not make 40+ years of institutional IT knowledge and learnings suddenly obsolete. In Symantec’s recent State of Cloud Survey, many traditional core IT disciplines were highlighted as being problem areas for cloud adopters. Ironically, many of the issues cited, like rogue IT and backup complexity, are commonly encountered with on-premise IT, so it’s no surprise to see these issues replicated on cloud platforms.