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A disconnect exists between federal government CIOs, CISOs and IT hiring managers and the human resources professionals charged with finding qualified candidates with cybersecurity skills, according to a just-published report. The report, Cyber In-Security: Strengthening the Federal Cybersecurity Workforce from the Partnership for Public Service, concludes that IT managers are less satisfied than their HR counterparts with the quality of cybersecurity recruits and the time it takes to hire IT security personnel. "The human capital management process is broken; operations and HR people should be joined at the hip and collaborate across the government," the report quotes Norman Lorentz, former chief technology officer at the White House Office of Management and Budget. Indeed, one third of chief information officers, chief information security officers and IT hiring managers surveyed for the report expressed unhappiness with candidate quality vs. 10 percent for HR managers. Sixty-one percent of HR managers vs. 40 percent of IT managers expressed satisfaction with candidate quality (see chart).

You have an unlisted phone number, you guard your personal information, you shred your financial papers- so everything is private and safe, right? Would you be alarmed to know that even when you think things are private, a perfect stranger can look you up online, see your address, birth date, past addresses, and even see a photo of your home, down to the detail of your child's play set out in the back yard? Alarmed yet? You should be. Take a look at this website: www.zabasearch.com. Simply plug your name in, and you are likely to be surprised, and probably a bit distressed to see all the information that is readily available online. How could this happen? Easy. Virtually every major change in your life is recorded somewhere in a government document. When you are born, a birth certificate is issued. When you obtain a driver's license, get married, buy a house, file a lawsuit ' all of these events are recorded in public documents easily available to you and to others. Government records are intentionally public in order to enable citizens to monitor the government and to ensure accountability in our society. The challenge is to balance the public's right to information with the individual's right to privacy.

How will Barack Obama's administration affect IT spending in the trenches, where technology decision makers are dealing with strapped budgets and a shaky economy? President Barack Obama's official campaign Web site is a model of how 21st century technology tools can boost a candidate's popularity, building significant buzz via blogs, IM applications and e-merchandising. And Obama's campaign wasn't confined to his own site either, because he chose to expand his presence on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Eons and BlackPlanet. His images and words also constantly popped up at outlets such as Flickr, Digg and YouTube. All these efforts made Obama an accessible, immediate and appealing figure to both younger voters and older ones who regularly connect to the Internet. Ultimately, they energized his campaign and helped secure a decisive victory for the nation's first African-American president. Certainly, Obama enters the White House with a reputation as one of the most-if not the most-tech-savvy chief executives ever. For starters, he's created the position of a federal chief technology officer to oversee the future of information technology for government agencies.

DURING the Parliament session on Monday, MP of Ang Mo Kio GRC Ms Lee Bee Wah, asked the Minister of Information, Communications and Arts, Dr Lee Boon Yang, whether a comprehensive privacy law will be introduced to protect the privacy of individuals and their personal data. She also queried about the existing laws which are in place to protect people from spam mails and unauthorised sale of personal information, as well as protecting people whose photographs are posted on blogs and other new media platforms. Dr Lee's reply was: "The Government recognises the importance of data protection and the need to protect personal data. At the same time, we also appreciate the impact of data protection on businesses and the general public. I had previously informed the House that an Inter-Ministry Committee is reviewing Singapore's data protection regime. This review is on-going. We are currently looking into developing a data protection model that can best address Singapore's privacy concerns, commercial requirements and national interest. As data protection is a complex issue with extensive impact on all stakeholders, this review will take some time." With regards to unauthorised Use of personal data, he replied: "While there is currently no generic data protection law, it does not mean that there is no protection of personal data. In fact we have in place strict provisions in sectoral laws, such as the Banking Act and codes for medical professionals to protect sensitive financial and health information. There are also other industry codes of practices against the unauthorised use of personal information. For example, in the telecommunications sector, under the Telecom Competition Code, IDA requires licensees to take reasonable measures to prevent the unauthorised use of End User Service Information. A telecom licensee would be in breach of the Code if it shares with third parties its customers' information that was obtained from the use of its service, without the cust

The offshoring of business processes has become increasingly popular. Fueled by advancements in technology, the benefits of offshoring are primarily attributable to the savings from lower personnel costs at foreign locations. According to the Global Financial Services Offshoring Report 2007 by Deloitte & Touche U.SA LLP, over 75% of major financial institutions report offshoring a portion of their operations. Some economists estimate that up to one-third of total U.S. employment in services may ultimately be offshored (Steve Lohr, "At IBM, a Smarter Way to Outsource," The New York Times, July 5, 2007). Offshore entities often operate in developing countries such as India, China, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The offshoring of business processes generally takes two forms: outsourcing to an unaffiliated offshore entity (offshore outsourcing), or ownership and operation of an affiliated offshore entity (AOE). Many multinational companies have AOEs. For example, Accenture has more employees in India than in the United States; IBM is projected to have more than one-quarter of its workforce in India by 2010; and companies like General Electric, Eli Lilly, Google, and Microsoft are expanding their R&D centers in India and China (House Committee on Science and Technology, June 12, 2002). Offshoring and the Auditing Profession The potential benefits of offshoring have not been ignored by the accounting profession. In past years, several large public accounting firms began using AOEs to perform certain nonaudit procedures for their U.S.-based clients. For example, Ernst & Young uses AOE employees to prepare client tax returns (Vanessa Houlder, "E &Y Sends Compliance Work Offshore," Financial Times, July 11, 2007), and a number of accounting firms use AOEs to print documents for delivery to clients. The largest international public accounting firms have recendy begun testing the offshoring of certain auditing procedures on very large U.S. audit engagements to thei

A privacy and consumer protection expert in the North Carolina attorney general's office and an Hispanic ally of President Barack Obama are being considered for the Federal Trade Commission, according to antitrust sources with knowledge of the administration's thinking. The five-person commission, which shares antitrust duties with the Justice Department and oversees consumer issues, has been short one commissioner since Deborah Majoras resigned in March 2008. The term of a second commissioner, Pamela Jones Harbour, ends this month. Harbour, an independent, has told the White House that she would like to remain in place but this is unlikely, according to the antitrust sources. Two women are under consideration for the FTC, the sources told Reuters. Julie Brill, North Carolina's senior deputy attorney general and chief of consumer protection, previously worked in the Vermont Attorney General's consumer protection and antitrust divisions.

"Imagine that you are vacationing and get a phone call from your neighbor telling you that your alarm just went off, but there is nothing you can do about it. You don't know what set it off and if it is just a fluke. You find yourself now wide awake, asking yourself why you got the alarm to begin with. For iPhone users, the solution to this kind of situation lies in an application provided by CAVU Mobile Surveillance Solution. This app allows you to view live footage taken from any security camera on your iPhone, transforming it into a portable advanced home security system. With the CAVU Mobile Surveillance Solution, the next time a neighbor calls to tell you that your alarm has gone off again, you can automatically see what is going on inside your house on our phone- no matter where you are. This application also lets you save footage on your phone, which is useful in case you need to show/reference the footage on the go. From your phone you can even control the position of the camera - providing you with multi-camera views. If you're thinking to yourself right now about how you wish you had been nicer to your neighbor, because then he/she would be more likely to actually call you to tell you that there is a good chance you're being robbed- stop. This iPhone app also allows for poor neighbor to neighbor relations. It provides a self sufficient, independent of any neighbor, surveillance system on your phone to tell your that there is suspicious action going on. For a cool $19.99 you can be your own FBI squad team, the C, the, S and the I in CSI Crime Scene Investigation, and most importantly, sure that your home is safe."

"State regulators may consider requiring utilities and other firms to provide customers clear information regarding how their data may be used, if consumers authorize such use, and guaranteeing that customers have the ability to select the purposes for which their data may be used."