Yearly Archives: 2012

How to distinguish a fake digital signature from a real one

There are lot misconceptions about digital signatures. Some think that adding an image of a signature to a document is sufficient to legally sign a document. Others know that digital signatures are described in standards, such as PDF 32000-1 and the ETSI Technical Standards TS 102 778 (part 1 to 6). For those who don’tRead… Read more »

Unmanned Helicopter Reconnaissance Squadron One, Malware Campaign Against the Defense Industry, and More

Here is today’s federal cybersecurity and information technology news: The Navy is establishing Unmanned Helicopter Reconnaissance Squadron One (HUQ-1) effective October 1, 2012. More here. The Office of Management and Budget released an updated report stating that 318 data centers have been closed since 2010, 50 of them May. More here. The Defense Information SystemsRead… Read more »

China, Twitter and the 0.1%

Earlier this month I had the good fortune of visiting China – a place I’m deeply curious about and – aside from some second year university courses, the reporting from the Economist, and the occasional trip over to Tea Leaf Nation – remains too foreign to me for comfort given its enormous importance. As alwaysRead… Read more »

DARPA’s UPSIDE Seeks to Rethink Computing

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency‘s (DARPA)’s Unconventional Processing of Signals for Intelligent Data Exploitation (UPSIDE) program is looking to develop a computing infrastructure that is three orders of magnitude faster and four orders of magnitude more energy efficient, or roughly 1,000 and 10,000 times respectively, than current digital processors. To do so, the BroadRead… Read more »

Back to basics: Understand the full cycle of business development to get more contracts

My 7-year-old daughter, when working on a puzzle, knows to glance at the whole picture first, before starting to assemble the pieces. So, her process is to study the picture, and then find a corner piece to which she then starts adding pieces. We, as adults, sometimes forget to take a step back and lookRead… Read more »

Reusable Civic Technology: Urban Legend or Urban Reality?

This year’s fellows have been hard at work building apps for their cities for almost six months now, and we’re starting to see the fruits of their efforts. Fellowship cities across the country — and the Code for America office — have been abuzz about product launches like Textizen in Philadelphia, Honolulu Answers in Honolulu,Read… Read more »

Feds Implement New Online Debarment Checking System

At the end of July, the website for checking whether a business is debarred or suspended from doing business with the federal government, the Excluded Parties List System (EPLS), was officially replaced by a new System for Award Management (SAM), and the transition has not been without its rough patches. Go to my blog forRead… Read more »

Thank you to this week’s Scholarship Fund donors!

Here we are at the end of the second week of our scholarship fund drive for the 2012 NCDD conference and we want to thank this week’s contributers for your generosity! Our goal is to raise $15,000 from our community to help people from diverse backgrounds make it to NCDD Seattle who may not otherwiseRead… Read more »