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President Obama has identified cybersecurity as one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation, but one that we as a government or as a country are not adequately prepared to counter. Shortly after taking office, the President therefore ordered a thorough review of federal efforts to defend the U.S. information and communications infrastructure and the development of a comprehensive approach to securing America's digital infrastructure. In May 2009, the President accepted the recommendations of the resulting Cyberspace Policy Review, including the selection of an Executive Branch Cybersecurity Coordinator who will have regular access to the President. The Executive Branch was also directed to work closely with all key players in U.S. cybersecurity, including state and local governments and the private sector, to ensure an organized and unified response to future cyber incidents; strengthen public/private partnerships to find technology solutions that ensure U.S. security and prosperity; invest in the cutting-edge research and development necessary for the innovation and discovery to meet the digital challenges of our time; and begin a campaign to promote cybersecurity awareness and digital literacy from our boardrooms to our classrooms and begin to build the digital workforce of the 21st century. Finally, the President directed that these activities be conducted in a way that is consistent with ensuring the privacy rights and civil liberties guaranteed in the Constitution and cherished by all Americans.

The popularity of cloud computing and BYOD really brought information security to the forefront. The intruders also got smarter and more intelligent in finding new ways and new loopholes to attack. In order to deal with the future attacks, what a business…

"Google engineers are experimenting with new ways to replace user passwords, including a tiny YubiKey cryptographic card that would automatically log people into Gmail, according to a report published Friday. In the future, engineers at the search giant hope to find even easier ways for people to log in not just to Google properties, but to sites across the Web. They envision a single smartphone or smartcard device that would act like a house or car key, allowing people access to all the services they consume online. They see people authenticating with a single device and then using it everywhere."

his article explains why supplying data to researchers is set to become a profitable line of business for entities that hold large stores of health data in electronic form. Health information systems are a form of infrastructure, and Congress's cost-based fee for data preparation and transmission echoes pricing schemes traditionally used in other infrastructure industries such as railroads, electric power transmission, and telecommunications. Cost-based fees for infrastructure services, of constitutional necessity, must allow recovery of operating and capital costs including a return on invested capital-in other words, a profit margin.  This fee structure is being launched in an emerging 21st-century research landscape where biomedical discovery will depend more than it has in the past on studies that harness existing stores of data-such as insurance claims and healthcare data-that were created for purposes other than the research itself. This article explores why, in this environment, the new fee structure has the potential to destabilize already-fragile public trust and invite state-law responses that could override key provisions of federal privacy regulations, with devastating consequences for researchers' future access to data. To avoid this outcome, the cost-based fee must be thoughtfully implemented and accompanied by reform of the HIPAA waiver provision now used to approve nonconsensual use of people's health data in research. This article identifies specific defects of the existing framework for approving nonconsensual uses of data with the aim of eliciting a wider debate about what the reforms ought to be.