More than half of Federal employees use at least one mobile device at work, CDW-G found, and many are using personal devices to accomplish work-related tasks. Nearly all Federal employees who use a mobile device for work believe the device makes them more productive, and the majority say increased mobility will improve citizen service.“Mobility is the ‘new normal’ for Federal employees”
The report, based on a survey of 414 Federal employees and IT staff, examines current trends in mobility, how agency IT professionals are managing mobile devices, and the steps they are taking to secure Federal data.
Mobility is no longer just a nice-to-have capability, CDW-G found: Nearly all 203 Federal IT professionals (99 percent) said they have deployed mobile devices to their agency workforce. What’s more, 62 percent of those IT professionals said their agencies allow employees to use personal devices for work.
“Mobility is the ‘new normal’ for Federal employees,” said Bob Kirby, vice president of federal government for CDW-G. “Employees increasingly expect to be able to work anywhere and at any time. Agencies responded first by deploying mobile devices, and now they are enabling use of personal devices. And the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend is likely to continue, following the Obama administration’s November 2011 executive order that asked agencies to limit the number of IT devices they issue to employees, including mobile devices, in order to reduce costs.”
Agencies are providing a good security baseline for mobile device use, with the majority establishing mobile data security policies (85 percent) and requiring data security training for mobile device users (84 percent). However, CDW-G found that there is room for agencies to improve security measures in order to protect sensitive data. For example, while 82 percent of IT professionals said their agency deployed encryption for mobile devices, far fewer said their agency protects mobile devices with multi-factor authentication (54 percent), remote lock and wipe (45 percent), and data loss prevention software (39 percent).
“Federal employees – just like those in other industries – access a wide variety of data in the course of their jobs, from financial information to employee and taxpayer records to email and social networking accounts,” Kirby said. “Employees understand the need to keep private information just that – private. But as cyber threats become increasingly sophisticated, they need a full suite of security tools to help them.”
Mobile device management (MDM) – over-the-air distribution of applications, data and configuration settings for all types of mobile devices – can help agencies deploy and manage security tools across the mobile workforce, while reducing IT management costs. While 71 percent of Federal IT professionals say they include MDM in their security efforts, CDW-G found that most are not deploying a full suite of security tools to agency and personal devices via MDM, revealing an opportunity to improve agencies’ security posture.
CDW-G recommends that agencies:
Evaluate and/or establish a BYOD policy
Assess their MDM needs
Audit their MDM tools to ensure they support the agency’s security goals
Incorporate the personal devices employees use for work into the agency’s MDM strategy
The CDW-G Federal Mobility Report surveyed 203 Federal IT staff and 211 Federal employees. The margin of error for the total sample is ± 4.8 percent at a 95 percent confidence level.
More than 70 Web firms urged the U.S. Congress to step back, take a breath and reassess its approach to crafting new intellectual property laws.
The firms, including Mozilla, WordPress, Reddit, Startup Weekend, Cheezburger Network, O’Reilly Media and Twitpic, say that, “ align ourselves with the more than 14 million Americans who joinedus in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).Together we participated in the largest online protest in American history (currently estimated atmore than 115,000 websites) because we believe these bills would have been harmful to freespeech, innovation, cyber security, and job creation.”
It adds, “Now is the time for Congress to take a breath, step back, and approach the issues from a freshperspective. ”
Perhaps the key point the firms make is that, “Finally, any future debates concerning intellectual property law in regards to the Internet must avoid taking a narrow, single-industry perspective.”
The SOPA and PITA laws came on the heels of powerful lobbying efforts by the movie and music industries as attempts to stop piracy. The bills were widely seen as over-reaching and full of potential for abuse that could comprise the Internet.
A massive online reaction by Web companies, the social media sphere and freedom of information advocates halted progress of the bills, at least temporarily.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is offering up to $10 million in grants of about $1.5 million to $2 million each for projects that pilot new online identity credentials.
NIST is soliciting proposals to pilot on-line identity solutions that allow individuals and organizations to utilize secure, efficient, easy-to-use, and interoperable identity credentials to access online services in a manner that promotesconfidence, privacy, choice, and innovation.
“A secure cyberspace is critical to our prosperity. We use the Internet and other online environments to increase our productivity, as a platform for innovation, and as a venue in which to create new businesses. Our digital infrastructure, therefore, is a strategic national asset, and protecting it—while safeguarding privacy and civil liberties—is a national security priority” and an economic necessity. By addressing threats in this environment, we will help individuals protect themselves in cyberspace and enable both the private sector and government to offer more services online.”
NIST hopes to fund five to eight projects up to two years each.
Preliminary proposals are due from eligible contractors by March 1.
“Startups and small businesses are the backbone of the American economy. They are responsible for the vast majority of all new jobs created in the United States; they are the nation’s greatest source of innovation; and they are critical to helping restore U.S. competitiveness,” CPPI President and CEO Chris Long said. “This report addresses real policy and regulatory solutions that can help spur U.S. job growth and innovation in the coming years.”
“Job creation has rightfully dominated most conversations of late. This report sheds light on the precursor to job creation and what I find to be top of mind for the CEOs I meet with – access to capital, global markets and modern technology. Focusing on those three elements can help small businesses thrive in a way that will reinvigorate the U.S. economy,” added Steve Felice, president and chief commercial officer of Dell, who moderated CPPI’s December panel discussion.
Key findings from CPPI’s special report include:
Access to a Variety of Capital. Many investors aren’t aware of startups in their region. Bringing visibility to these new firms will help attract investment from local resources. Also, making the capital gains tax exemption permanent for investors in qualified small businesses (QSB) would provide a corporate tax credit of up to $5 million for these QSBs in the first taxable year of profit, followed by a 50 percent corporate income tax exclusion in the two succeeding taxable years to help finance growth.
Access to Modern Technology. Cloud computing and mobile technologies have lowered the cost of entry for smaller firms, allowing them to invest more in their innovative ideas. Moreover, global supply chains used to be controlled by larger firms; however, smaller firms now have the ability to build virtual supply chains to expand their presence around the globe.
Access to Global Markets. President Obama is committed to opening up foreign markets to American businesses, as evidenced by his pledge to double the amount of exports over the next five years. He also reiterated this commitment in his State of the Union Address last week stating “I will go anywhere in the world to open new markets for American products.” A number of government agencies, including the Small Business Administration, have already been providing small businesses with information and assistance to help them bring their products to overseas markets. Making these programs easier to find would help smaller firms take advantage of these valuable resources.
Distinguishing Startups from Small Businesses. Failure is a natural and important part of successful firm development. Startup owners learn valuable lessons when their firms fail, and they often develop an expanded professional network that will benefit them over the long term.
CPPI’s latest report on restoring U.S. competitiveness can be downloaded from the organization’s web site atwww.cppionline.org.
Facebook is expected to file for a $5 billion (or more) IPO this week, reports saying sometime today (Wednesday, Feb. 1). Here a Forbes video rundown on the possibility of the most anticipated IPO of the year and likely to be one of the largest in history:
AOL sees 10 percent gains in ad revenue
Is AOL finally on the right track? The one-time major force in the Internet world has had a rough time for years now. CEO Tim Armstrong’s strategy of making it a media powerhouse with ad revenue replacing its once lucrative Internet access business.
The company reported a Q4 2011 increase in ad revenue of 10 percent, primarily from gains provided by Patch, it’s local news blog effort. Still, the company saw its overall revenue drop 3 percent to $576.8 million, from $596 million in the same period last year.
It’s big acquisitions have not fared so well. It’s $315 million acquisition of The Huffington Post and $25 million TechCrunch buy have not proved all that wise so far. After TechCrunch’s founder Michael Arrington and some of its top talent departed, the site lost much of its bite and luster, it seems to us. Huffington Post has serious competition from The Daily Beast, which we like better, personally.
An old law, the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), prohibits companies like Netflix or Blockbuster from sharing a person’s movie-rental history. Although the House passed an updated version of VPPA, some Senate Democrats are balking at allowing streaming media services such as Netflix to share user rental histories on social media such as Facebook.
Those questioning the wisdom of passing the updated House bill include Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who also authored the 1988 VPPA act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) that drew enough protests to halt its progress. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) chair of the subcommittee hearing considering the revised House bill, questioned the bill’s clarity.
From some of the things we’ve read that Sen. Leahy has said in regard to the SOPA and PITA acts, we’re not sure he doesn’t need a remedial course in digital technologies and the Internet economy.
You can hear Marc Randolph, co-founder of Netflix, in person at the upcoming 2012 Southeast Venture Conference in Tysons Corner, VA, Feb. 29-March 1.
The tech and Internet communities have mounted a campaign to prevent passage of the SOPA bill.
On Wed., Jan. 18th the Internet stood up against two censorship bills pending in Congress. In the largest social declaration in history, millions of people and tens of thousands of websites boycotted or blacked out as a demonstration of U.S. gov’t sanctioned censorship. Today, both SOPA and PIPA are tabled.
Recounting the day in blackouts and tweets, Frugaldad’s new graphic, “The Day the Internet Stood Still” explains how this protest, the largest in history, signals social media as more than a forum to discuss Bieber’s new tattoo—it’s the last best place to mobilize media users.
For their part, sites like Wikipedia and Tumblr enabled emails and calls by blacking out content pages and replacing them with links to contact representatives. No day in Congressional history saw such an onslaught of contact.
Wikipedia’s black banners were viewed 160 million times. Their protest brought three times more curious visitors than normal. With over 3 million emails sent on Wednesday alone, Congressional rep. contact links were down due to traffic. And with over 400,000 phone calls to Congress, each representative received an average of 919 calls.
If passed, SOPA and PIPA would place full copyright burden on websites. This means major content hosts–sites like Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter–could face infringement charges and government shut down. Internet users owe the unpopularity and tabling of these censorship bills to the very social media platforms they endanger.
More than half of global security experts interviewed in a new study say a cyber arms race is already underway, and more than a third believe cyber defense is more important than missile defense.
So says McAfee and the Security & Defence Agenda (SDA) in the findings from a report; Cyber-security: The Vexed Question of Global Rules that paints, for the first time, a global snapshot of current thinking about the cyber-threat and the measures that should be taken to defend against them, and assesses the way ahead.
The SDA, the leading defense and security think-tank in Brussels, interviewed leading global security experts to ensure that findings would offer usable recommendations and actions. The report was created to identify key debate areas and trends and to help to governments and organizations understand how their cyber defense posture compares to those of other countries and organizations.“Until we can pool our data and equip our people and machines with intelligence, we are playing chess with only half the pieces.”
Here are some noted findings:
57% of global experts believe that an arms race is taking place in cyber space.
36% believe cyber-security is more important than missile defense.
43% identified damage or disruption to critical infrastructure as the greatest single threat posed by cyber-attacks with wide economic consequences (up from 37% in McAfee’s 2010 Critical Infrastructure Report).
45% of respondents believe that cyber-security is as important as border security.
The state of cyber-readiness of the United States, Australia, UK, China and Germany all ranked behind smaller countries such as Israel, Sweden and Finland (23 countries ranked in report).
McAfee asked the SDA, as an independent think-tank, to produce the most informed report on global cyber defense available. The SDA had in-depth interviews with some 80 world-leading policy-makers and cyber-security experts in government, business and academia in 27 countries and anonymously surveyed 250 world leaders in 35 countries.
As the only specialist security and defense think-tank in Brussels, SDA has become one of the world’s leading forums for the discussion of international defense and security policies.
The methodology used for rating various countries’ state of cyber-readiness is that developed by Robert Lentz, President of Cyber Security Strategies and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber, Identity and Information Assurance. [see infographic on rankings] :
Virtualization savings are real – and are expected to grow – but government agencies need to overcome funding uncertainties and other significant barriers to achieve their virtualization goals, according to a study by MeriTalk underwritten by Microsoft and NetApp.
The new report, “Virtualization Vacuum: The 2012 Government Virtualization Study,” explores the current and future state of play in government server and desktop virtualization initiatives, including key differences between Federal and state/local markets.“Virtualization and consolidation are critical components of an effective cloud strategy, resulting in tangible benefits”
The survey of government IT decision makers indicates that virtualization initiatives are picking up momentum. Eighty-two percent of Federal and 77 percent of state-and-local IT professionals say their agencies have already implemented some server virtualization, leading to an estimated savings of 19 percent of their IT budgets – $15 billion across government.
By 2015, virtualized workloads are expected to nearly double from 37 to 63 percent – which would boost the savings to an estimated $23.6 billion government-wide.
According to the report, 57 percent of Federal and 64 percent of state-and-local respondents say server virtualization takes priority over desktop virtualization. While government agencies have plans to implement some form of desktop virtualization, less than one in 10 plan to virtualize all applications for all users. However, if desktop virtualization provides just half of the savings of server virtualization, agencies could save 9.5 percent of their IT budget or $7.5 billion.
“When agencies do begin developing their virtualization plans, they should look beyond servers and consider desktop virtualization as well,” said Mark Weber, President, U.S. Public Sector, NetApp. “The more opportunities that agencies are able to recognize and incorporate into their modernization frameworks, the greater their long-term benefits.”
Barriers to virtualization
Despite the proven results and clear savings opportunity, only 48 percent of Federal and 39 percent of state-and-local respondents believe that they have the funding needed to meet their server virtualization goals, and that’s not the only barrier.
The most common challenge that agencies face for both server and desktop virtualization is legacy application migration. Security is also a hold-up, but more so for Federal agencies than for state/local – 41 percent of Feds cited security concerns, as opposed to 24 percent of state-and-local respondents. Only 63 percent of respondents say their management fully supports server virtualization adoption.
Fewer than half report that their agency has a formal policy or common framework for server virtualization.
“Virtualization and consolidation are critical components of an effective cloud strategy, resulting in tangible benefits,” said Susie Adams, Microsoft Federal’s Chief Technology Officer.
Industry can realize tremendous leaps in scalability
“If agencies are thinking vigorously and broadly about combining server consolidation, data center consolidation, and private cloud infrastructures, the industry can realize tremendous leaps in scalability, cost savings, improved services, and integrated management. In many ways this begins with a smart approach to virtualization.”
The report also reveals that while virtualization yields big savings, good things come to those who wait. Fifty-seven percent of participants say they expect to wait one year or more to realize savings once a server virtualization solution is fully implemented and operational.
“Virtualization Vacuum: The 2012 Government Virtualization Study” is based on an online survey of 302 government agency CIOs, CTOs, IT directors/supervisors, IT managers, and data center managers conducted in October 2011. To download the full study results, please visit http://www.meritalk.com/virtualizationvacuum.
Congress apparently pays some attention when Wikipedia goes dark and Internet powerhouses from Google to Boing Boing go dark to protest its ill-conceived attempt to control digital piracy with bills that widely overshot their mark and included vague language that could have disrupted the Web.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday morning that he was postponing a vote scheduled Tuesday on the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and House Judiciary Committee Chair Lamar Smith said he would not seek a vote on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) until “there is wider agreement on a solution.”
Thousands of Web sites went dark this week to protest the proposed legislation. Many sponsors of the bills withdrew their support as the Internet rallied opposition.
The bills, as written, would give the government and corporations what many critics say are broad powers to shut down Web sites they say are involved in copyright infringement – without the need so much as a court hearing.
We earn a living via copyright, so we’re in favor of protecting intellectual property rights, but not with draconian measures such as these.
Actually, however, we may need to completely reconsider just how we do want to regulate intellectual property in the Internet age.
While 57 percent see the current U.S. business environment as somewhat or much better than the average advanced economy, respondents are much less optimistic about the trajectory of the U.S. as a competitive location, according to the the results of Harvard Business School’s first Survey on U.S. Competitiveness.
When asked to assess how the trajectory of the U.S. business environment compares with emerging markets, 66 percent see the U.S. falling behind, while just 8 percent see it pulling ahead. Along with HBS Dean Nitin Nohria, Professors Michael E. Porter and Jan W. Rivkin presented the findings at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Father of competitiveness strategy
Porter is a leading authority on economic competition, Porter is generally recognized as the father of the modern strategy field, as has been identified in a variety of rankings and surveys as the world’s most influential thinker on management and competitiveness.
The survey also examines the desirability of the U.S. as a business location and decisions by firms to relocate existing activities or establish new ones. Of 1,767 cases where respondents had been personally involved in U.S.-related location decisions within the past year, 57 percent considered the possibility of moving existing activity out of the U.S., while only 9 percent considered moving existing activities into the United States.
The remaining 34 percent weighed decisions to set up new activities. Of those offshoring decisions that had been resolved by the time of the survey, the U.S. lost the activity 84 percent of the time. While the country fared better in potential onshoring or new activity decisions (75 percent and 51 percent win-rates, respectively), its overall win record totals just 32 percent.
U.S. losing out on business location decisions
“The U.S. is losing out on business location decisions at an alarming rate, and those activities being offshored are more job-rich than those coming in,” said Porter, the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard and head of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at HBS.
“However, the U.S. retains its core strengths in a number of important areas such as university education, innovation, and entrepreneurship, which means that we have the resources to reverse this trend. The vast amount of data from this survey highlights the need for business leaders, policymakers, and academics to collaborate on practical ways to make progress.”
The survey is part of the School’s ongoing U.S. Competitiveness Project, which defines competitiveness as “the ability of companies in the U.S. to compete successfully in the global economy while supporting high and rising living standards for Americans.”
“When we were first laying the groundwork for this Project and this survey, we thought long and hard about how competitiveness should be defined, and why it was such an important goal for the nation’s future,” said Dean Nohria.
“We made sure not to focus on job growth or inequality alone, because that ignores the need for healthy wages that will support America’s middle class. Adopting a broader definition was paramount in this effort.”
Other major findings include:
While the negative view of the future of U.S. competitiveness is widely shared among respondents, different perceptions across groups exist. For instance, respondents between the ages of 40 and 60 are most likely to expect a decline (more than 70 percent thought so) and least likely to foresee a gain (less than 15 percent). Similarly, alumni in America are more pessimistic about the country’s future competitiveness than their counterparts outside the U.S.
Of activities reported to have been moved out of the country in the past, 11 percent consisted of 1,000 or more jobs, while only 5 percent of activities considered for movement but retained in the U.S. consisted of 1,000 or more jobs (none moving to the U.S. consisted of 1,000 or more jobs).
Of the 1,005 location decisions about potentially moving out of the U.S., the most common alternatives considered wereChina (42 percent), India (38 percent), Brazil (15 percent), Mexico (15 percent), and Singapore (12 percent).
Greatest impediments to creating jobs
The survey also asked respondents about the greatest impediments their firms faced in investing in and creating jobs in the United States. Policy-related factors like regulation and taxes are cited as major factors, along with talent-related issues like personnel cost and immigration issues.
“One of the most important aspects of this survey was its effort to pinpoint the roots of the country’s competitiveness problem,” said Rivkin, the School’s Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Business Administration.
“The findings allow us to assess whether individual elements of the U.S. business environment, such as the complexity of our tax code or our K-12 education system, each strengthens or weakens U.S. competitiveness. This provides important insight for leaders who are seeking ways to boost America’s long-run prosperity.”
More than half of Federal employees use at least one mobile device at work, CDW-G found, and many are using personal devices to accomplish work-related tasks. Nearly all Federal employees who use a mobile device for work believe the device makes them more productive, and the majority say increased mobility will improve citizen service.“Mobility is the ‘new normal’ for Federal employees”
More than 70 Web firms 
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is 
Three elements can restore U.S. competitiveness and create new jobs, says a Center For Public Policy Innovation report, 
Facebook is expected to file for a $5 billion (or more) IPO this week, reports saying sometime today (Wednesday, Feb. 1). Here a Forbes video rundown on the possibility of the most anticipated IPO of the year and likely to be one of the largest in history:
Virtualization savings are real – and are expected to grow – but government agencies need to overcome funding uncertainties and other significant barriers to achieve their virtualization goals, according to a study by 
