In this week's Technically Speaking: DDoS Attacks Triple in 2012; Amazon Cloud Adds Protection Against DoS Attacks; Two States Overhaul IT to Boost Social Services; Six Open Source Security Myths Debunked; A Checklist for Keeping Mobile Apps Secure.

Many professionals are unaware how to troubleshoot, load, or configure their devices and will turn to their IT department for help. Doing so results in lost time, frustration, and third party assistance. Now there is a simple solution that CAD and GIS users can practice to configure their mobile apps.

As this is the first week of the first year of a new decade, predictions are in demand. Below are my predictions for Information Technology in the Federal, State, and Local public sector. I promise to revisit these predictions at the end of December to test their accuracy. Wink. Cloud Computing: Off and running, finally. In the last few months the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, and the General Services Administration have committed to the cloud for office productivity applications like Google Apps or Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite. Major cities including Los Angeles and New York have also made the decision to adopt cloud services. The latest buzz is that FedRAMP will be ready for prime time by April.