Kenneth Corbin

WASHINGTON — Securing government IT systems is a high-stakes game. Like the private sector, the government is under constant attack from legions of hackers looking to infiltrate and exploit software and architecture vulnerabilities. But Uncle Sam may have it worse: Fleet-footed companies aren’t saddled with a sprawling bureaucracy and Byzantine procurement process that can hinder […]

We’ve made it through Selection Sunday. The brackets are official. Now begins the mad dash of handicapping the match-ups, picking the winners, and taunting your friends and coworkers — on the Internet, of course. The Web today is awash in news, predictions and opinions about the Big Dance, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament that kicks […]

Facebook is porting its vision of an open, interconnected social Web to the mobile world, bringing its Connect tool to the hottest smartphone on the scene. On Saturday at the South by Southwest 2009 conference, Facebook unveiled Connect for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, adding a feature that enables developers to sync up their applications […]

WASHINGTON — When it comes to securing the nation’s digital infrastructure and ensuring that first responders can talk to each other, the Department of Homeland Security sees its role as a liaison — and often a mediator — between the myriad agencies and businesses involved. One of DHS’s chief priorities is incubating and funding research […]

WASHINGTON — The federal government isn’t known as the vanguard of IT innovation, but don’t tell that to Vivek Kundra. Here at the FOSE conference, an annual trade show for government IT employees, the newly appointed federal CIO gave one of his first public addresses since being tapped for the job, a new position that […]

WASHINGTON — With the benefit of hindsight, the Russian military campaign against Georgia last summer seems to offer conclusive proof that cyberwar has come into its own. Speaking here at the FOSE convention, an annual trade show for government IT workers, Georgia’s Secretary of National Security, flanked by a pair of U.S. security experts, recounted […]

WASHINGTON — If it works for a datacenter, why not a city? Here at the FOSE expo, an annual confab for government technology workers, a team of executives from Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HP) pitched a flexible, energy-efficient computing model to a crowd of federal IT managers. Chandrakant Patel, director of HP Labs, offered the ambitious promise […]

WASHINGTON — Cybersecurity experts told a House panel Tuesday that the federal government’s defense mechanisms against online threats to the nation’s infrastructure are in disarray, hobbled by interagency turf wars and a failure to broker effective partnerships with the private sector. Corralling the multitude of federal agencies overseeing national cybersecurity is no easy feat. Trying […]

They were at it again today, the forces of innovation and entrepreneurship squaring off against the forces of greed and legal chicanery before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Try to guess which is which. Ah, the set of funhouse mirrors we know as patent reform. What fun! Today’s hearing was the eighth the Judiciary Committee has […]

WASHINGTON — Federal agencies overseeing $7.2 billion for broadband deployment through President Obama’s massive economic stimulus bill today unveiled an aggressive plan for allocating the funding — laying out a rough timetable for when the first dollars might begin filtering into the economy. Here at the Department of Commerce, the heads of the three agencies […]

With the government set to begin doling out billions of dollars for new broadband projects, the groups that have long been calling for a ubiquitous, open Internet are watching eagerly to make sure the money goes where it is needed most. President Obama’s economic stimulus package, enacted Feb. 17, allocated $7.2 billion in grants for […]

An Illinois sheriff is suing Craigslist in an attempt to stamp out prostitution and child exploitation from the popular online classifieds site. Cook County sheriff Thomas Dart announced the federal lawsuit at a press conference in Chicago, telling reporters that his office is replete with cases where illegal activities were facilitated through Craigslist, which he […]