Guest Columns

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly In The Pentagon's Cyber Strategy BIRMINGHAM - William Lynn,the US Deputy Secretary of Defense wrote the most succinct description of the US Pentagon Cyberstrategy yet in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs. Here are the good, the bad, and the ugly components of that strategy.

Health Reform Act Gives Small Businesses Affordable Health Insurance WASHINGTON DC - For decades, America's small business owners have asked for more affordable health insurance coverage and more tax relief. The new health reform law – the Affordable Care Act – provides both.

Internet2 Commends FCC's Proposed Changes To Rural Health Care Program WASHINGTON D.C. - Internet2 applauds the Federal Communications Commission's action late last week in announcing the Notice of Proposed Rule Making to modify the Rural Health Care Program. Through the RHCP, the FCC seeks to catalyze the formation of a ubiquitous advanced healthcare network that will serve the national interest by improving citizens' access to first class healthcare services, resources and research.

Google's Wi-Spying, Intelligence Ties Prompt Call For Congressional Hearing SANTA MONICA, CA - Citing new information about Google's classified government contracts and the Internet giant's admitted Wi-Spying activity, Consumer Watchdog Monday said it is more imperative than ever for the Energy and Commerce Committee to conduct hearings into possible privacy violations by Google.

Forensic Fluids Laboratories – State-of-the-Art Drug Testing KALAMAZOO - Bridget Lorenz Lemberg is a Forensic Toxicologist with more than 20 years of toxicology and pharmacology experience. She is also the founder and owner of one of the fastest growing biotech companies in west Michigan. In 2005, she started Forensic Fluids Laboratories, a woman-owned biotech company that specializes in oral fluid drug testing for employers and for the legal and medical professions. Forensic Fluids Labs, the only oral fluid testing laboratory in Michigan, started with one person, now employs 24 and is seeking to hire additional professional and technical workers.

Cyberwar Becomes A Growth Market In The US BIRMINGHAM - In 2001 Ralph Bendrath, a German cyber security writer and researcher, wrote a report that dug into the efficacy of the use of the term cyberwar. His report is remarkable in that most of what he covers ten years ago represents today's state of affairs.

The Story Of How And Why I Wrote Surviving Cyberwar BIRMINGHAM - After a five month period of editing, indexing, and finally printing Surviving Cyberwar has been published by Government Institutes, an imprint of Scarecrow Press, a division of the Rowman and Littlefield company.

New Rules Of Engagement In Cyber Warfare WASHINGTON DC - We don't know yet whether whistle-blowing Web operation Wikileaks has hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. State Department documents provided by U.S. Army Specialist Bradley Manning or whether it will publish them. But in the meantime Wikileaks' Julian Assange is providing ammunition to those who believe that the fragile new world of cybersecurity demands a more flexible approach to the rules of engagement.

Nearly Two-Thirds Of IT Infrastructure Expected To Be Outsourced By 2020 ST. LOUIS - An annual study commissioned by Savvis, a provider of cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprises, predicts the number of companies that outsource their IT infrastructure will increase globally from 17 percent today to 64 percent in 2020.

Social Media: No Longer A Means Of Socialization for Michigan Businesses ANN ARBOR - The results are in and social media marketing for businesses is here to stay. The benefits of social media marketing to business are countless: it provides a way for businesses to market without having to loosen their financial belts. A survey by Re:NEW Michigan reported that 74.6 percent of respondents state social media to either be "very important" in their marketing strategy or that they were "trying and learning" to implement social media techniques in their businesses.

Big Events Showcase What Great Things Are Happening In Michigan LANSING - Two high-profile events this week provided an excellent opportunity to promote our diversification efforts and showcase some of the great things happening in Michigan.

Security Management Practises Need Work SAN FRANCISCO - SenSage has announced the results of an industry survey on security management practices taken during last month's RSA Conference. The survey of 360 security professionals identifies several weaknesses in respondents' log management, compliance reporting, real-time monitoring, forensic investigation and incident response processes.

An Introduction Of The FBI Unit Chief Public Private Alliance Unit WASHINGTON DC - Hello and thank you for the opportunity to introduce myself as the new unit chief of the FBI Cyber Division's Public & Private Alliance Unit, which includes the InfraGard Program.

Seven Cyber Scenarios That Should Keep You Up At Night BIRMINGHAM - Scenario planning is an important tool in the realm of cyber security. Stakeholder teams are assembled to create plausible scenarios of possible future threats. Repercussions are predicted to help quantify risk and justify mitigating investments in technology and changes to policy and operations.

Reverse Lo-Jack Security Breach Reported BIRMINGHAM - Wired's ThreatLevel reported that a disgruntled ex-employee of a car dealership in Austin, Texas, used a black box lock-out device on over a hundred vehicles to disable them or make their horns sound. The service he used is provided by Payment Technologies in Cleveland. The product is well thought out with safety features and back up batteries. If a car owner fails to make a payment the car will not start. There is a one-time emergency code to use once per pay period and other safeguards.

Companies Are Choosing To Invest And Grow In Michigan Because We Are A Great State In Which To Do Business LANSING - The headlines definitely point to the kind of week we had at MEDC: "Gov. Jennifer Granholm announces more than 17,300 new jobs for Michigan," "Yacht maker Four Winns to hire 2,320 workers in Cadillac," and, my personal favorite, "2,500-Job Surge to Energize Michigan."

Survey: Shelved Tech Projects To Proceed NEW YORK - Technology executives are signaling a readiness to make critical IT investments, a new survey shows. More than one-third (37 percent) of chief information officers (CIOs) interviewed said, post-recession, they plan to implement software and hardware upgrades that had been deferred due to a soft economy. Others foresee moving forward with virtualization projects (16 percent) and website design initiatives (16 percent) as conditions improve.

Cyber Vigilante Takes On Islamic ExtremistsR BIRMINGHAM - I had an interesting demonstration in January from a hacker who goes by the handle "The Jester" or in so-called l33t speak, th3j35t3r which is his Twitter ID. Since January 1, The Jester has been systematically wreaking havoc with several websites he associates with Al Quiada and Jihadists via a Denial of Service attack delivered over the web through an anonimizer service.

Google Engages In Cyber Vigilantism BIRMINGHAM - Last month, I related communications I had with The Jester, an individual who has decided to express his outrage at Jihadist organizations by systematically taking down their web sites. A week later, we learned that engineers at Google had been engaging in their own form of cyber vigilantism by hacking into a command and control server in Taiwan.

Putting Chinese Cyber Espionage In Perspective BIRMINGHAM - Last month, Google announced that they had been hacked by sources in China. The target was email accounts of Chinese activists and bloggers. An outraged Google threatened to discontinue censoring search results at the Google China search engine google.cn.