Activity surrounding cybersecurity saw an uptick this week as Democrats and Republicans tried to position themselves on tech-impacting legislation. Below is a quick round-up of the leading stories: Senators Unveil Major Cybersecurity Bill New Cybersecurity Center for Excellence Launched GOP Cybersecurity Bill Takes Light Regulatory Touch Privacy also was a top issue[...]

A recent article in The New York Times discussed how security concerns are contributing to the reluctance of federal agencies and businesses to migrate their IT operations to the cloud.  While some of these concerns are legitimate, given the benefits of the cloud, the transition seems inevitable and the longer we wait, the more money is wasted. In the past, businesses[...]

Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack stated during a hearing this week that “we are not going to take it anymore,” referring to her efforts to pass comprehensive data notification breach reform, in response to the recent announcements by Sony and Epsilon of its major data breaches.   As Congresswoman and Chairwoman of the Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee, she[...]

Those in Washington know that the best way to get steam behind a public policy issue is by building on the momentum of a national news cycle.  Well this week the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade held a hearing entitled “The Threat of Data Theft to American Consumers”.     The hearing was in response to Sony’s announcement[...]

Yesterday, the Senate Science Commerce and Transportation Committee held a hearing on the “State of Online Privacy”.  This was the first of two heating hearings focused on whether additional legislation was needed to protect consumers from how companies manage consumer data collected online. There were was testimony from several private, not-for-profit and federal[...]

The National Institute for Science and technology announced its next cloud workshop scheduled for April 7-8 in Gaithersburg, MD.  Last year NIST convened a series of workshops on cloud computing to develop a roadmap for federal agencies to migrate to the cloud.  Specifically, NIST stated, “Federal CIOs need and want answers to practical operational questions.[...]

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to attend the "State of the Net" conference hosted by the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus held in Washington, D.C. The event was very well attended and there were numerous panels on a variety of public policy issues related to technology. Read on for a summary of the panels I attended. Online Privacy on Trial:[...]