GitHub hires government focused employee, Companies want Lawsuit Shield to share Cyber Threat Data and more

By Ryan Kamauff

Here are the top cyber news and stories of the day.

• GitHub hires first government-focused employee – GitHub has recently announced the hiring of their first government focused employee. GitHub offers social coding, which opens the development process. “former White House Presidential Innovation Fellow Ben Balter will join its team to focus on state, local and federal government awareness and integration.” Via FedScoop, more here.
• Using A Mobile POS… The Secure Way – While mobile POS systems (think Square or PayPal) are becoming extremely popular, they are not quite secure (or not always implemented securely). This guide offers some tactics, techniques and procedures to better secure your mobile payment system. Via Resource Nation, more here.
• Info overload and usability could cause VA doctors to miss electronic alerts – VA automatic alerts can help VA medical staff provide a better degree of more tailored care to needy veterans. However, too many alerts and too much data may give them more than they can manage successfully. This poses an additional challenge for the doctors in an already overloaded system. Via FierceGovernmentIT, more here.
• As agencies come to terms with cloud security, another barrier emerges – A new “cultural” barrier is emerging as cloud computing is becoming possible in federal government. “Richard Spires, the Homeland Security Department’s chief information officer and vice chairman of the CIO Council, said cloud is changing the way IT, acquisition and program management employees do their jobs, and that makes them uncomfortable.” Via Federal News Radio, more here.
• Companies Want Lawsuit Shield to Share Cyber Threat Data – “Companies such as Dow Chemical Co. (DOW), AT&T Inc. (T), and Intel Corp. (INTC) want lawmakers to give companies immunity from lawsuits on data exchanges with other firms and the government.” This shield could be critical to actually getting companies to share information with each other. Not only is that data incredibly secure, but it can also be quite costly to create and gather. Via Bloomberg, more here.
• 4 Issues to Resolve Before Jumping on the BYOD Bandwagon – We are big proponents of BYOD here. Why should users have to carry a second device, or not be able to access email/messaging/calendar/contacts on the go? Intuit has a list of some key issues which should enter into the discussion both before a BYOD roll out and during continued auditing of BYOD. These factors are; cost, troubleshooting, security and privacy. Planning and mitigations for these issues will provide a more stable and secure BYOD environment. Via Intuit, more here.

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