networking-info

That would be the new Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) by Amazon . I am a big proponent of the public cloud but I am a bigger proponent of giving what the customers really want. Amazon had resisted offering a private cloud but they finally gave in and offered a private cloud or at least this is what they want the customers to believe. The bloggers are already questioning whether VPC is a true private cloud . Regardless of the arguments whether the VPC is really a “virtual” private cloud or a “virtually" private cloud , I believe, this placebo cloud is likely to help the customers overcome the cloud computing adoption barriers: Security: The placebo cloud would alleviate the perceived risk of adopting the cloud computing. The perceived risk is based on the customers’ past experiences. The customers believe that anything that they can connect using VPN must be safe even if they are tunneling into a set of shared resources. The customers will get an environment what they believ...

According to a Newtworkworld.com article , the United States Joint Forces Command (USJFC) is currently evaluating Unisys Stealth technology at the Joint Transformation Command for Intelligence (JTC-I) in Suffolk, Virginia. "Unisys Stealth Solution for Network lets an organization set up “communities of interest” through a group policy using Microsoft Active Directory, with session-specific encryption keys scrambling data that can only be decrypted by those belonging to each group. Stealth works to “bit-split” data into multiple packets and re-assemble it to authorized users, which alone can decrypt it." A Unisys press release further states that USJFCOM will be testing "cryptographic bit-splitting" as a way to converge DoD Global Information Grid networks operating at different security levels into a single network infrastructure. "This technology can address a longstanding challenge for the Department of Defense and other government agencies: how to ...

Lately I have observed significant movement in two transformational trends - adoption of REST over SOAP and proliferation of non-relational persistence options. These two trends complement each other and they are likely to cause disruption sooner than later. The enterprise software that required complex transactions, monitoring, and orchestration capabilities relied on the SOAP-based architecture and standards to realize their SOA efforts. The consumer web on the other side raced towards embracing RESTful interfaces since they were simple to set up and consume. There are arguments on both the sides. However, lately the market forces have taken the side of REST even if REST has significant drawbacks in the areas such as security and transactions. This once again proves that a simple and good enough approach that conforms to loose contracts outweighs a complex solution that complies to stricter standards even if it means compromising certain critical features. The web is essentially an u...

Rich Bruklis wrote an excellent essy on how the government missed a perfect opportunity to use cloud computing. In " Cloud Opportunity Missed " he writes: "It appears that the voucher system set up to handle dealer claims was crushed by unusual high demand. Now 'unusual high demand' to me is synonymous with cloud computing." He also cited three drivers that caused the problem: - The high popularity surprised the auto industry which forecasted that the program wouldn't have a major effect on sales. - The dealer sales people ‘pre-sold' the program to customers causing an initial rush to the Cash for Clunkers web site and crashed the system. - The Transportation Department officials were presented with just 30 days to get the program up and running. As Rich also noted, it seems that the Government instictively relied on less automation, not more, by adding 700 more human claims processors to the original 300 midway through the program. Why didn't t...

This week in San Diego, CA the US Navy held the initial planning conference for Trident Warrior '10. The Trident Warrior series is the premier annual FORCEnet Sea Trial Event sponsored by Naval Network Warfare Command (NETWARCOM). FORCEnet’s experimental results are incorporated into a definitive technical report used to develop Military Utility Assessment (MUA) recommendations. This report is provided to the Sea Trial Executive Steering Group (STESG) for consideration and acquisition recommendations. The primary goal of FORCEnet experimentation is to influence accelerated fielding of improved Command and Control (C2) capabilities to the fleet through Program of Record (POR) acceleration or transition of new technologies into PORs. Additional goals include evaluating Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP) that best exploit, promote, expand, and incorporate new FORCEnet capabilities in support of optimizing execution of Naval operations; increasing warfighter effectiveness thro...

A clever choice of the right architecture on right infrastructure has helped the SaaS vendors better manage their operational infrastructure cost but the SaaS vendors are still struggling to curtail the cost of sales. As majority of the SaaS vendors achieve feature and infrastructure cost parity, reducing the cost of sales is going to be the next biggest differentiation for the SaaS vendors to stay competitive in the marketplace. Direct sales model is highly ineffective and cost-prohibitive for the SaaS vendors as it does not scale with the volume business model that has relatively smaller average deal size. The role of the direct sales organization will essentially get redefined to focus on the relationship with the customers to ensure service excellence and high contract renewal rates in addition to working on long sales cycles for large accounts. How can a SaaS vendor reduce the overall cost of sales to maintain healthy margins and growth? This is a difficult nut to crack. There are...

A General Services Administration (GSA) representative is now scheduled to provide a briefing on the agency's cloud computing initiative during a " Best Practices for Cloud Initiatives using Storefronts " session on September 21, 2009 in Fairfax, VA. The session, part of the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) Plenary , is expected to foster an interactive dialog on interoperability and portability standards for Federal cloud computing deployments. Through the recent release of a Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Request for Quote (RFQ) , the GSA has positioned itself as a significant participant in the federal government's move toward the use of cloud computing technologies. Casey Coleman, GSA CIO, has previously stated that cloud computing is the best way for government technology to move forward. To support this effort, the agency is encouraging an active dialog with industry on possible future standardization issues such as: Interfaces to Cl...

During this week Federal Executive Forum , FAA CIO Dave Bowen mentioned protection against software vulnerabilities, wireless intrusion and website vulnerabilities as his top cybersecurity priorities. As the Assistant Administrator for Information Services and Chief Information Officer for the Federal Aviation Administration, Mr. Bowen is the principal advisor to the FAA Administrator on the agency's information technology and directs strategic planning for information technology across the agency. He also oversees the implementation of the FAA's Information Systems Security, E-Government, Shared Services, and Process Improvement Programs. The entire interview will be broadcast on August 13th, 2009 at 2:00pm during this week's Federal Executive Forum on Federal News Radio. These 1 hour radio and video programs are produced and broadcast monthly in Washington, DC and feature 3-4 Top Government IT Executives discussing mission critical issues. The programs always include som...

Greg Schaffer, Assistant Secretary for CyberSecurity & Communications for the US Department of Homeland Security, sees Trusted Internet Connections , EINSTEIN , and front line defense of the nation's networks as top cybersecurity priorities for the department. His views were shared during this weeks Federal Executive Forum . As Assistant Secretary for CS&C, Schaffer will work within the National Protection Programs Directorate to lead the coordinated efforts of CS&C and its components, including the National Cyber Security Division, the Office of Emergency Communications, and the National Communications System. He will engage the public and private sectors as well as international partners to prepare for, prevent, and respond to catastrophic incidents that could degrade or overwhelm the nation's strategic cyber and communications infrastructure. The entire interview will be broadcast on August 13th, 2009 at 2:00pm during this week's Federal Executive Forum on F...

In a Federal Executive Forum interview , Robert Lentz, Chief Security Officer for the US Department of Defense, highlighted the departments cybersecurity priorities. Mr. Lentz is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber, Identity and Information Assurance (CI&IA) in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Networks and Information Integration/Chief Information Officer. Since November 2000, he has been the Chief Information Assurance Officer (CIAO) for the Department of Defense (DoD) and, in this capacity, oversees the Defense-wide IA Cyber Program, which plans, monitors, coordinates, and integrates IA Cyber activities across DoD. Along with the need to increase network speed and hardening, Mr. Lentz also mentioned efforts to increase the number of "cyber defenders" from the current 45,000. Other priorities include: Insuring that information can flow from the cloud all the way to the edge Helping defense industrial partners increase their cybersecurity ...

Multiple sources are reporting that Twitter continues to be under a denial of service attack. Some are speculating that this represents the power of a coordinated bot network attack. For the government community it is also a demonstration of what a well organized adversary can do against a major website. Since Twitter is a cloud application on top of Amazon Web Services, my earlier thoughts explained in Cloud Computing: The Dawn of Maneuver Warfare in IT Security quickly come to mind. I'm also contemplating that this could have something to do with Twitter effectiveness that I showcased in Iranian Protests Showcase Twitter, Facebook, YouTube (and Cloud Computing) ! The Georgia incident showed the reality of cyberwar. Is this a Cyber terrorist attack? Update from Reuven Cohen : If I were a betting man, I'd say that this attack was done using Multi-Stage BGP & DNS Attack Vector . My only real proof is a little common sense as well as the simple reason that a typical HTTP ...

The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) will be holding a one-day cloud computing session during its plenary meetings, 21-25 September at the Fair Lakes Hyatt in Fairfax, VA. A complimentary workshop on NetCentric Patterns will also be held Wednesday morning that week. The NCOIC is a unique collaboration of premier leaders in the aerospace, defense, information technology, large-scale integrator and services industries. The Consortium works in tandem with customers from around the world, each with a specific mission, to provide a set of tools that enable the development of network centric capabilities and products. An example of the consortium's unique capabilities the recent agreement between NCOIC and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to advance the Enterprise Architecture of NextGen , FAA’s national airspace (NAS) transformation program. The NCOIC will analyze and evaluate NextGen’s enterprise architecture views, products, plans, net-centric p...

Just in time for the new Federal Cloud Computing Storefront , Sevatec, Inc. is announcing the development of a toolkit to help federal agencies transform their enterprise architectures to cloud computing more effectively and seamlessly. With last week's General Services Administration (GSA) Request For Quotation (RFQ) release for the US Federal Cloud Computing Initiative , Sevatec may be positioning itself well. As part of the GSA Federal Supply Service Schedule 70 , the RFQ process will grant agencies direct access to pre-authorized, commercial experts capable of delivering cloud computing products and services. Cloud computing is a general term for delivering hosted services over the Internet with massive elasticity and scalability. Different from traditional hosting, cloud computing provides easy, scalable access to computing resources, storage, and other IT services. Cloud computing is on demand, elastic, and fully managed by the provider, allowing agencies to shop a multi-l...