Government IT News For VARs — January 28, 2015
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
In news this week, FedRAMP will release new standards for comment, and President Barack Obama urges Congress to support his cybersecurity agenda.
FedRAMP Set To Release Draft High-Impact Systems Standards For Public Comment
According to Fed Tech Magazine, FedRAMP was scheduled to release draft standards this week with and host a webinar today. The standards will serve as a baseline for securing federal high-impact systems in the cloud. The standards will be open for a public comment period, and are anticipated to be finalized by the end of 2015. Included in the high-impact systems category are all cyber-critical infrastructure and key resources identified by a given agency’s Homeland Security Policy Directive 7 plans. FedRAMP Director Matt Goodrich explained that the standards provide industry with clarification for the first time regarding how to implement security requirements as well as providing justification for why standards were selected.
President Obama Pushing Cyber-Security Protection Programs
The E-Commerce Times reports President Obama has charged the new Congress with making cybersecurity a priority in 2015. Obama has called for additional legislation that would strengthen cybersecurity programs, stating that there are two important goals: first, to facilitate information sharing between the private sector and government regarding credible cyberthreats and to enhance collaboration and information sharing within the private sector; and second, to prosecute the sellers of botnets and to criminalize the sale of stolen financial information overseas.
Government IT Talking Points
The E-Commerce Times reports that, frustrated by the lack of developer interest in Blackberry, the company’s CEO wants Congress to adopt what he called “Application Neutrality,” to guarantee openness not just at the traffic layer, but also at the content/application layer.
The E-Commerce Times reports that the U.S. National Security Agency ( NSA) actually knew in advance that Sony was about to be hacked by the North Koreans and did not notify them, but many analysts argued that it was not their responsibility to do so.
Information Week reports that Gartner has given a thumbs up to Docker security, stating that Docker containers are almost as secure in isolating resources as Linux or virtual machines, but that both Docker and Linux systems fall short when it comes to management and administration, according to a Gartner report, “Security Properties of Containers Managed By Docker.” The study concludes that Docker containers are suitable for multitenant, Platform-as-a-Service operations.
For more news and insights, visit BSMinfo’s Government IT Resource Center.