In this week's Technically News: Obama Orders Agencies to Make Data Open, Machine-Readable; Fixing Flaws in Federal Government IT Security; Hearing Set to Probe Data Center Progress; Amazon Web Services Leading Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service App Development; Driving Better Governance with Open Source; The Fully-Secure Quantum Internet System.

In this week's Technically Speaking: DDoS Attacks Triple in 2012; Amazon Cloud Adds Protection Against DoS Attacks; Two States Overhaul IT to Boost Social Services; Six Open Source Security Myths Debunked; A Checklist for Keeping Mobile Apps Secure.

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.

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.

Having AWS on GSA is just the first step. While it’s now very easy to procure AWS, there’s still a lot of educating we need to do to explain how these services should be procured.

DLT Solutions sponsored last month’s 3rd Annual Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector Summit, where I saw firsthand that Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) are gaining acceptance and increasing traction as the Public Sector migrates workloads to the cloud.

Hey, did you hear how NASA used Amazon’s cloud computing for its latest Mars mission? NASA’s management of the Curiosity Rover is demonstrating the considerable technical expertise of the scientists involved in the design and deployment of history’s greatest continuation of unmanned research on another planet. The JPL Curiosity Rover Team’s use of the latest in Amazon Web Services (AWS) Infrastructure and Platform support services (IASS) are demonstrating the team’s considerable understanding of the financial benefits as well.