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.

A while back, I took the folks over at RackSpace to task for spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) concerning Cloud APIs. Luckily for all involved they simmered down on the subject (which most likely had nothing to do with my little article), and now the OpenStack project that RackSpace incubated doesn't look like the Chicken Little of the open source software world anymore. However, just like that game of whack-a-mole, we've got another FUD top-ten hit ripping through the charts: Data Portability & Cloud Lock-in.

SolarWinds, a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT management software, recently released the results of their 2013 SolarWinds Security and Compliance Survey. Over 160 IT professionals were polled and their answers revealed fears about the present and future, on both cybersecurity and the influx of new technology.

Over the past few months our “situational awareness” with respect to cybersecurity has been enhanced by events including attacks on the New York Times, Twitter, and Facebook; the release of compelling evidence that much of our “CyberPain” can be traced to foreign, state-sponsored organizations; and the President’s timely Executive Order for Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity. Have we reached a tipping point?

Zombie Data is old, forgotten data you think you’ve disposed of, but haven’t, coming back “from the dead” when a hacker finds it. And unfortunately, in the digital age, these zombies are not the slow limping version; they’re the 21st century, adrenaline-fused kind.

Imagine a pen that practically remembers what it writes. SmartInk provides the ability to do just that. There is a desire for paperless field data collection, but it has yet to happen – until now.

In the final part of this series, DLT Solutions Engineering Team Lead, Matt Micene assures us that there is a happier future for Enterprise IT on the horizon.

Much of the technology pundi-sphere has been burbling about the creation of shadow IT, cloud democratizing IT, the rise of bring-your-own-device (BYOD), and all sorts of anti-enterprise IT buzz to the point that I've even blogged about it before.

esterday, I had the privilege of attending Deltek’s Federal Executive Breakfast where Robert Bigman, the CIA’s former Chief Information Security Officer gave a presentation on cybersecurity and his time with the Agency. My five key takeaways are:

“There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” -- Mark Twain

We often claim to be a data driven world.  Yet, measuring the wrong data can prove success, while masking a failure to provide value.