Government IT News For VARs — September 25, 2013
Business Solutions searched recent headlines for news of interest to VARs serving government organizations.
Is Your Client An Innovator That Uses Government Data?
You and your customers have the opportunity to participate in Open Data 500. This New York University Governance Lab project is the first census of U.S. companies that use government data to develop new products and services. A goal of Open Data 500 is to see how government data can be made more useful and promote innovation of new products and services. Companies that meet the census criteria are asked to complete an online form. Companies included in the census will be part of the list that will be a resource for other businesses, investors, and the media to use to identify businesses that are innovators in this area.
RSA Warns Customers Not To Use BSafe Product
Tech News World reports that security firm RSA has informed its customers not to use its BSafe security software products due to a weakness in encryption standards. RSA’s warning came after the National Institute of Standards and Technology announced not to use the security standard it designed and published. The “Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator” standard is believed to have a National Security Agency (NSA) backdoor that would enable decryption.
ACLU Questions License-Plate Reading Technology
The ACLU is questioning privacy issues surrounding license plate readers. The organization says it analyzed documents from police departments in 38 states and Washington, D.C. and says information on how data collected from license plate readers is being used. The ACLU has released a document that explains its concerns and an argument for putting protections in place.
Vendor Settles With FTC Over Internet Security Breaches
A Channelnomics article reports a settlement in the case of a security camera vendor charged by the Federal Trade Commission with not ensuring images would be open to online viewing. The article calls the case “a cautionary tale for resellers of physical security wares: The integrity of these systems is only as good as the weakest part of the system supporting it.”
Off-The-Shelf Can’t Compete with MEAPs
A Field Technologies magazine article reports growth in companies turning to mobile development platforms to create their own apps, rather than using off-the-shelf applications. A 2011 report by Infiniti Research predicted the mobile enterprise application market (MEAP) would reach $1.6 billion by next year.
Government IT Talking Points
Apple’s new iPhones include a fingerprint sensor – and in his article for policeone.com, Tim Dees discusses speculation that Apple is creating a fingerprint registry.
A Computerworld article says with government constraints, the “scale-up” approach to data storage — adding monolithic storage systems to expand capacity — can be difficult to fund. An alternative is “scaling out,” aggregating multiple storage systems into a large storage cluster that results in equal or better performance than monolithic scale-up systems.