Cyber City, USA News

For IT pros looking to get into government work, it’s often hard to find a single source of information about every specific agency and department. If you want a gig specifically in the government sector, you might want to consider these eight certifications, which have been reported as the most common ones among existing IT employees and contractors of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).
This group includes one of the newest information security certs that has been added to the DOD Information Assurance (IA) approved certifications. We’ll also review the current certifications that are approved for employees/contractors looking to work within the IA departments of the DOD.
CompTIA Security+
CompTIA’s...

The high demand for information technology professionals is driving up the number of college students pursuing IT-related degrees, according to a new report.

The “American Tech Talent Crunch,” released Tuesday by IT jobs website Dice.com, found that 43,072 IT-related bachelor degrees and 37,677 associates degrees were conferred in 2011, jumping 9 percent and 16 percent respectively over the previous year. The number of associate’s degrees in particular has jumped 36 percent over the past four years, Dice found.

Those numbers are lower than their peak in 2004, when nearly 60,000 tech bachelor’s degrees were conferred, but significantly higher than 2009, when just 38,000 were given.

“As the growing...

The beginning of the 21st century has largely been defined by new technology. Technology is ubiquitous, opening portals of both opportunity and vulnerability for those dependent on networked information and services.

These new challenges derive from sources far more difficult to track than conventional 20th century threats. And they're proving even tougher to thwart. Today, anyone armed with a keyboard, a sophisticated knowledge of IT and a determination to exploit systemic weaknesses can do lasting damage to both public and private organizations.

Nationally, hundreds of billions of dollars are spent annually in the United States on detecting, neutralizing and recovering from cyberattacks.

In February...

National security company TASC Inc. opened a new training center and cyber-test laboratory in San Antonio this week.
TASC underwent a renovation at its offices for the new cyber-security laboratory and a 70-person training center. TASC employees will be able to earn professional certifications and keep abreast of emerging technologies.
“San Antonio has been a major base of operations for TASC since we first opened our doors here in 1996,” says Rick Wagner , senior vice president of TASC’s Defense Group. “Our investment in these facilities is just one example of the continued investments we make to meet the evolving challenges our customers face.”
More than 100 TASC scientists and engineers in San Antonio...

BOSTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government charged eight individuals with stealing debit card data from two Middle Eastern banks in a scheme that prosecutors said netted $45 million in a matter of hours - a crime they called one of the biggest bank heists in history.
A New York-based group hacked into credit card processors' computers to steal Mastercard Inc (MA.N) debit card data, which they used to make approximately 36,000 transactions over a total of 10 hours in 24 countries, the Justice Department said.
The cards were issued by National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah (RAKB.AD) in the United Arab Emirates and Bank of Muscat in Oman, prosecutors said. The case demonstrates that cyber crime still poses a major...

Building 171 at Port San Antonio is one of San Antonio’s largest buildings at more than a quarter mile in length. It has housed Air Force missions for several decades and was home to many evacuees during Hurricane Katrina. After the 2005 round of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), Port San Antonio assumed ownership of the facility.
A prestigious ribbon cutting on April 30 officially opened Building 171, a former weapons logistics center, as home of the 24th Air Force (AF), among other critical cybersecurity and intelligence missions of the U.S. Air Force. Major General Suzanne Vautrinot, Commander of the 24th AF; Wayne Alexander, Chairman of Port San Antonio; and Richard Perez, President & CEO of The Greater S....

Rochester Institute of Technology from New York claimed the Alamo Cup at the eighth annual National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NCCDC), held April 19-21 at the St. Anthony Hotel in San Antonio.
The annual competition is organized by the Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security at The University of Texas at San Antonio. It pits teams of full-time college students from across the country against each other in an environment where cyber-security skills are pushed to the limit. Modeled after real-world scenarios and obstacles, the NCCDC is the first cyber-security competition designed to test how well students operate and manage a network infrastructure, similar to those found in the commercial sector....

By Mark Hosenball and Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON — Intelligence leaders said for the first time on Tuesday that cyber attacks and cyber espionage have supplanted terrorism as the top security threat facing the United States.

That stark assessment, in an annual "worldwide threat" briefing that covered concerns as diverse as North Korea's belligerence and Syria's civil war, was reinforced in remarks by the spy chiefs before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

They expressed concern that computer technology is evolving so quickly it is hard for security experts to keep up.

"In some cases, the world is applying digital technologies faster than our ability to understand the security implications...