Government Archives

Tag: Government

MITRE Gets $29m For First Cybersecurity Center of Excellence

September 25, 2014 Paul Roberts

MITRE Corporation has been awarded $29 million from the U.S. Commerce Department for the nation’s first federally funded National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE), according to a statement by the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (or NIST). The contract charges MITRE with the job of operating the federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in the areas of research, development, engineering and technical support; operations management; and facilities management. This is the first FFRDC dedicated to enhancing the security of the nation’s information systems, NIST said. The NCCoE was established in 2012 in partnership with NIST, the state of Maryland and Montgomery County, Md. It brings together experts from industry, government and academia to develop integrated cyber security solutions using existing, commercially available technology. “As the principal champion of the digital economy in the federal government, the Commerce Department is committed to defending our nation’s digital infrastructure from cyberattacks and helping American companies strengthen […]

FDA Seeks Collaboration on Medical Device Security

September 24, 2014 Paul Roberts

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday put out a call for ideas and input on how best to secure medical devices and the healthcare system from cyber attack. In a federal notice, the FDA announced that it will hold an October workshop entitled “Collaborative Approaches for Medical Device and Healthcare Cybersecurity.” It also solicited input from stakeholders within the government and from the public health sector on medical device and healthcare cyber security. The workshop is scheduled for October 21 and 22 and will run from 9:00 AM to 5:00PM at the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center Auditorium in Arlington, Virginia. [Read more Security Ledger coverage of connected medical devices here.] The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is looking for ideas about how best to implement aspects of both Executive Order 13636 for“Improving Critical Infrastructure” and follow-on guidance like the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) “Framework for Improving […]

Building an Unhackable Autonomous Vehicle – CityLab

September 11, 2014 Paul Roberts

The folks over at The Atlantic have an intriguing take on the subject of “connected vehicles” and autonomous driving. Now this is a vision that we’ve been chasing for more than 50 years (consider all the technicolor “highway of tomorrow” films from the 50s and 60s). And we’re on the cusp of realizing it. Google’s self-driving car is racking up the miles and automated features like hands free cruise control and collision avoidance are making their way into production vehicles. As Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic’s (cool) CityLab writes, however, there’s one major fly in the ointment when you consider the super efficient, algorithmically driven road of the future: humans. Specifically: Madrigal, in the course of writing an article on how to build an ‘unhackable’ car poses a scenario that I think is very likely: humans who subvert or otherwise game vehicle automation features to suit their own needs. Imagining the orderly procession […]

Cyber Insurance Is Sexy

September 9, 2014 Paul Roberts

So bland is the insurance business perceived to be, that it’s the stuff of Hollywood comedy. In the 2004 film Along Came Polly, Ben Stiller played a skittish, risk averse insurance adjuster with actuarial data on bathroom hygiene at his fingertips (no pun). Woody Allen famously depicts his hapless criminal Virgil Starkwell locked in solitary confinement with an eager insurance salesman in the 1969 mocumentary Take the Money and Run. Cruel and unusual punishment, indeed. Boring though they may be, insurance markets are incredibly important in helping society manage risks of all sorts. Insurance markets also have a funny way of shaping behavior – both personal and commercial – in ways that serve the public interest. Take the response to Hurricane Sandy as just one example. Law makers in Washington D.C. may never agree on whether that storm was a product of a warming climate. In fact, they may debate the […]

Exploding Gas Tanks: Risk, Liability and Internet of Things

September 5, 2014 Paul Roberts

We like to construct Hollywood friendly plots around a lot of the seminal moments in our collective history. For Civil Rights, we like to picture the integration of Little Rock High School, Rosa Parks’ courageous protest on a Montgomery bus or the March on Washington. For environmentalism, we talk about Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring or, maybe, the burning Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. (This vintage news footage of the 1969 fire calls it the fire that “sparked the environmental movement” without any apparent irony.) For automobile safety, we imagine Ralph Nader and the image of a 1972 crash test that shows the gas tank of the Ford Pinto exploding in a rear impact collision, engulfing both cars in flames. But those memories are often way oversimplified. Little Rock and the Montgomery bus boycott were just two battles in a fight for civil rights that went back to the end of the Civil War. Likewise, the Cuyahoga […]