NBISE Institute

TeamBrain It's time to collaborate.  Learn how to grow your ideas and streamline projects with your peers.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) Cyber Security Division's (CSD) announce a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Fiscal Year 2011 to improve the security in both Federal networks and the larger Internet. This Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) seeks ideas and proposals for Research and Development (R&D) in 14 Technical Topic Areas (TTAs) related to CSD.

The European e-Competence Framework (e-CF) is a reference framework of 36 ICT competences that can be used and understood by ICT user and supply companies, the public sector, educational and social partners across Europe.

European e-Competence Framework 2.0 for download

European e-Competence Framework 2.0 - downloadUser guidelines for the application of the European e-Competence Framework 2.0 - downloadBuilding the e-CF - a combination of sound methodology and expert contribution - downloadEuropean e-Competence Framework 2.0 - Executive overview - download

The Performance Testing Council is your gateway to freely exchange experiences, knowledge, and yes, passion with others in the practice of performance testing. Membership will help you refine your evaluation program as you learn from experts, share best practices, help define research, expand your marketplace and help establish common delivery standards.

"Years ago when we started writing checks, we might have been tackling five to 10 a day," says Paul Wood, a senior analyst with Symantec Hosted Services. "It's now well over 10,000 a day and growing." According to McAfee's 2010 Q2 Threat Report, the company identified 10 million pieces of malware in the first half of this year and is tracking close to 45 million in its malware database.

Vulnerability assessment products are also behind the curve, as Greg Ose and Patrick Toomey, both Neohapsis application security consultants, found when they recently set out to measure the relative effectiveness of various vulnerability scanners. "It's a question frequently raised by our customers," Toomey says. "They know the tools aren't going to catch all of the problems, but can they count on them to catch, say, 80% of the bad ones?" What Ose and Toomey discovered was far worse than even they had anticipated. Out of the 1,404 vulnerabilities accounted for by the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project during the sample period, there were only 371 signatures. In the best cases, the tools were in the 20% to 30% effectiveness range.

Toomey's observations are in line with those of security researcher Larry Suto, who earlier this year reported that Web application vulnerability scanners missed almost half (49%) of the vulnerabilities present during his tests.

The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) provides a common reference model for the identification of the skills needed to develop effective Information Systems (IS) making use of Information Communications Technologies (ICT). It is a simple and logical two-dimensional framework consisting of areas of work on one axis and levels of responsibility on the other.

SFIA enables employers of IT professionals to carry out a range of HR activities against a common framework of reference - including skill audit, planning future skill requirements, development programmes, standardisation of job titles and functions, and resource allocation.