Technically News – 10/7

Technically News scans thousands of industry articles to present you with a weekly source of IT news, information, and ideas that impact the public sector.

Shutdown Heightens Cybersecurity Risks, Feds Warn

A result of the ongoing government shutdown not talked about in mainstream media is the cybersecurity threat it creates. That threat hasn’t gone unnoticed by Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel: “If I was a wrongdoer looking for an opportunity, I’d contemplate poking at infrastructure when there are fewer people looking at it,” he said. Read more about the problem on Information Week.

Symantec Knocks Half a Million Computers Out of the ZeroAccess Botnet

Last week, in what now seems to be an almost weekly event, Symantec identified and “sinkholed” another worldwide cyberthreat, freeing 500,000 computers from its control. The perpetrator was the ZeroAccess botnet, a 1.9 million computer-strong network of zombie computers used for click fraud and bitcoin mining. Find out how Symantec accomplished this feat at IT Pro Portal.

Budget Worries Grow for Government IT Leaders

What’s more worrisome for public sector IT leaders than a government shutdown or cybercriminals? Their budget. Polled managers pointed to an inability to make improvements on important areas including security, cloud, and bandwidth. Find out other results of the survey by visiting Information Week.

Why IT's Economics Revolution Is More Than OpEx and CapEx

Most marketers position cloud’s benefits as an OpEx v. CapEx opportunity. But a recent CIO op-ed thinks there’s a third benefit: affordable agility. Having the ability to scale up and down through cloud is an immense advantage to both your budget and agency operations. Read that article here.

Your Fragile Supply Chain: Fatal to Business

If your computer says, “Made in China,” it’s not. It’s packaged there, but the individual components come from other countries, most likely throughout Asia. That’s why it’s critical for agencies to know exactly where their IT comes from. Forbes has an article written by NetApp’s General Council further discussing the real IT supply chain.