Bob Gourley

On Wednesday, May 23, Jason Healey, moderator for the Atlantic Council’s  “Building a Secure Cyber Future: Attacks on Estonia, Five Years On,” reminded us that for all the talk of emergent threats and new technology, cybersecurity has a history that’s worth remembering and learning from. While the Navy still studies the Battle of Trafalgar from the Napoleonic Wars, network defenders and pundits often ignore events from even five years back, deeming them no longer relevant. The technology has changed somewhat over the years, but the underlying principles of computer network operations and security as a whole have not, and with  events such as the interactive conference on the 2007 cyber attacks on Estonia, the Cyber Statecraft Initiative aims to bring that perspective to cyber conflict. Though perhaps not as significant a conflict in cyberspace as the Battle of Traf... (more)

Fed Tech Roundup October 20

The following are some of the hot topics in the federal technology ecosystem (fromFedTechTicker.com and TopTechTicker.com):  Fed Tech Ticker The Federal Government Turns to Technology - InfoToday.com Exclusive: Official documents, interviews reveal scope of OPM's financial woes - FCW.com Former House Intel chair: Info sharing could start in 30 days - FCW.com Drone registry plan expected by Christmas - GCN.com FAA aims to have drone registration in place by Christmas - FCW.com GSA: Hackathons Save Federal Dollars, Help Find Tech Talent - Nextgov Northrop Grumman's Victor Aguilar-... (more)

How Platfora Is Transforming Hadoop

When talking with the less-technical people in your enterprise, which may include end users and many others on the leadership team, it always pays to have non technical expressions to describe new capabilities. Here are some thoughts on Platfora that may be of use in discussions like that. Here is how to describe Platfora to a non-technical person: Platfora gives users a better ability to interact with information. They can ask their own questions, follow their own theories, run their own “what-if” scenarios, and ask unbounded questions in iterative ways over their data. To a us... (more)

Chrome Netbook OS; Tablet PCs; LBS; Open Source

2010 will undoubtedly be a year of technology innovation. In 2009, Twitter revolutionized the way we get news, it brought us closer to those who were a part of the news, almost making traditional media irrelevant. I don’t know who (or what) will be the Twitter of 2010, but below are a few predictions for the coming year. Google’s Chrome Netbook OS will be a hit. Their OS will mostly be dependent on a Google Account. A Google Account opens up their full Google Apps suite, which includes email, calendar, word processing, and MS Office like functions. Google’s renditions of their c... (more)

Don’t forget to register for FOSE 2013

By Ryan Kamauff FOSE is the nation’s premier event for government technology professionals who need tools, resources, and best practices to transition to the cloud, mitigate cybersecurity threats, and achieve the goals of the DGS while managing uncertainty and the critical need to make it all happen on-time and on-budget. “The heavy impact of sequestration and across the board budget cuts has put stress on agency training opportunities,” said Mike Eason, Vice President, Public Sector Events, 1105 Media, Inc. “We are responding by offering high-level training and educational pro... (more)