Over the past few years, the increase in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks has become mainstream media topics. Hostile Foreign Government, Terrorists, and Hacktivists are using these attacks to cause major problem for the U.S. government. The attacks have been successful against the CIA, DOT, FTC along with other agencies. DDoS attacks are not only a major headache but also can be very costly. A DDoS attack is regarded as an unequivocal attempt by hackers to thwart authentic users of a service from using that service.

The Department of Defense (DoD) is addressing an agency-wide concern with the current use and future of GSA Schedules. DoD officials are working with the GSA to explore new options for contracting. In light of recent budget cutbacks, the looming threat of sequestration, and task forces dedicated to eliminating redundancy in procurement across the department- contracting is at the forefront of reform.

Recently, a new wave of trends has emerged in the Human Resources (HR) market. Regardless of industry, HR organizations, departments, and leaders are focused on leveraging technology in new and creative ways to accurately manage and secure a tremendous amount of company and employee data while facilitating employee access to company and benefit information. As a result, they are turning to their internal IT departments for help streamlining and automating their complex human resource business processes. These technologies are showing improved process adherence and policy compliance, as well as increased employee satisfaction while reducing workload.

Over the past year the Department of Defense (DOD) has been conducting the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) pilot program which increased the amount of classified and unclassified information flowing between the DOD and private industry. The pilot included 17 defense companies and internet carriers AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink.

David McClure, Associate Administrator at GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, announced at the AFFIRM event on April 13th that the third party assessment organizations (3PAOs) will be announced in May 2012. This is a major step for FedRAMP, which will start the process for cloud service providers to obtain the provisional authorizations. These 3PAOs are an important part of the FedRAMP process, because they will be validating the cyber security control requirements for service providers. While the review is being handled mainly by DHS and GSA, the entire Joint Authorization Board (JAB) will have the final say on who will be a 3PAO. The JAB consists of the Chief Information Officers from GSA, DHS, and DOD. Department of Homeland Security Chief Information Officer, Richard Spires, said that once the 3PAO’s are picked in May, he expects the program to take-off in June of this year.

West Cheshire College, a leading vocational college in the northwest part of England, is the first college to implement a real time location tracking solution. This technology will enable West Cheshire to precisely track, analyze and manage student movements around the buildings’ free flowing public and learning zones. The variety of data being received via real time reporting will allow the college to see which students are in class at any given time. The college can act on this data based on student movement patterns within the building to efficiently allocate resources and optimize staff and resourcing capacity.