Industry Notes

In Government …

California Office of Information Security Wins $4.7 Million Grant

As the number of stolen Social Security numbers rise and computer hackers continue to breach restricted databases that contain personal information, California’ s Office of Information Security received a crucial last-minute gift this holiday season to help improve cyber-security.

The California Emergency Management Agency awarded the office $4.7 million in U.S. Department of Homeland Security grants for cyber-security projects. The federal funding will help Teri Takai, the state’s CIO, and her team conduct a statewide cyber-security risk assessment. The goal is to create a standardized assessment framework across all state agencies and streamline all IT operations.

Part of the grant will also go toward the Secure ca.gov Domain Name System (DNS) Project, which will upgrade the current infrastructure to improve protection for state Web sites and guard against cyber-hackers.

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Commissioners hear report on GIS project

The Van Wert County (Ohio Commissioners met with Darryl Owens on Thursday morning to receive a report on the map research project that has been ongoing in the county.

The purpose of the project has been to input all of the information from the county auditor's office in regards to parcels, boundaries and corresponding maps into a Geographic Information System (GIS). This will include topography information as well. Once all the information is in the GIS, then properties, ground area and other physical attributes can be searched and cross-referenced in the database.

Part of the discussion on Thursday revolved around how to make the information available to the public. Those options include stand alone computers at places like the county auditor and county engineer's offices or they could be web-based. No decision was made at the meeting but they will continue to study the most effective way to disseminate the information.

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House takes steps to boost cybersecurity

House leaders have asked the chamber’s security officials to implement a new cybersecurity training regimen for aides and take additional measures to protect sensitive information from potential hackers. After a six-week review prompted by the Washington Post’s disclosure of the ethics committee’s secretive deliberations, the House’s chief administrative officer recommended technology security updates that focused mostly on making staff aware of the security risks on the Internet. “Changes in security policies will make it clear that all sensitive House information will remain on House equipment at all times, it will be encrypted when stored on mobile devices and must not be transmitted on any public access system,” the chief administrative officer wrote in a letter to the House Speaker and the Minority Leader. A chief administrative officer undertook the review after a junior staffer took home a sensitive computer file that included a document naming every member of Congress the panel was investigating and updating most of the nearly three dozen investigations

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Government
Technology
Utilities

U.S. CERT: Technical Cyber Security Alerts

In Technology …

Kansas men charged with dealing in counterfeit Cisco products

Two Kansas men are being accused of selling counterfeit networking gear they claimed was from Cisco Systems. According to a December 3 news release from the Department of Justice, a pair of the Kansas City, Kansas, area, are facing “one count of conspiracy, 30 counts of trafficking in counterfeit goods and one count of trafficking in counterfeit labels” in connection with a scheme that federal investigators say stretched from China to the United States. According to documents from the U.S. Attorney General’s Office in Kansas, one of the suspects in 2003 created a business called Deals Express. Two years later, the other suspect established a company called Deals Direct. Through their businesses, the two would allegedly buy counterfeit Ciscobranded computer hardware built in mainland China and Hong Kong, put counterfeit Cisco labels on it, package it in counterfeit Cisco boxes and sell it with counterfeit Cisco manuals. The hardware components, including network cards and connectors, were sent from China to addresses in Kansas as well as UPS stores in Seattle and Portland, Oregon, according to federal investigators. In 2005, the owner of Deals Direct created a website for the company called Direct2technology and reportedly began selling the counterfeit Cisco products on eBay. Authorities began seizing shipments of the counterfeit products in 2005 in Los Angeles, Louisville, Kentucky, and Wilmington, Ohio.

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Microsoft Loses Appeal, Can No Longer Sell Word

A federal appeals court upheld Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2009 a $290 million patent infringement suit against Microsoft. The suit, brought by I4i, a Toronto-based firm that sells XML software, claimed that Microsoft had infringed on I4i's patented XML editor in the 2003 and 2007 versions of Word.

The suit was filed in 2007, and in August a Texas jury sided with I4i. Judge Leonard Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas fined Microsoft $290 million and forbid the company from selling the offending versions of Word. Microsoft appealed, but that appeal was struck down Tuesday by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

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Scientists promise an end to web attacks

Research published by academics at the University of Bristol’s Department of Computer Science suggests that a new technology could render cyber attacks “ computationally impossible”. The experts will present their research at the ASIACRYPT 2009 security and cryptology conference being held in Japan this week. The experts will discuss how a new technique could be applied that makes web site attacks impossible. The researchers plan to demonstrate how encryption could be used to prevent attacks such as denial of service, while also providing two-factor authentication that does not overburden users. Both hardware and software issues will be discussed. A second paper will demonstrate how to transfer information between databases in a truly encrypted way. The researchers suggested that this could be used by doctors to access centralized healthcare databases in a way that protects patient confidentiality, for example. A final paper covers what the researchers call “basic constructions in cryptography”, which could be applied to applications like the web browser.

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Government
Technology
Utilities

Current Electricity Sector Threat Alert Levels

In Utilities …

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International panel of experts conclude sound from wind turbines has no harmful effect on human health

An international panel of experts has released a report based on a review of a large body of scientific literature on sound and health effects, and specifically with regard to sound produced by wind turbines. After extensive review, analysis and discussion, the panel has concluded that sounds or vibrations emitted from wind turbines have no adverse effect on human health.

The study is the most thorough of its kind ever produced by a group of medical or scientific professionals. The seven-member panel includes experts in the fields of medicine, audiology, acoustics, environmental and public health from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Denmark.

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Smart Meter Skeptics

In some circles, pushing smart meters may end up being dumb policy. A wave of public relations is now drowning out the skeptical voices necessary to assure that the public does not get bamboozled, some consumer advocacy groups say.

The essence of their argument is that smart meters that are able to reach inside homes and adjust energy consumption have yet to bear fruit. And if they are unable to do so, then it would be consumers who pay the price for any failures.

“The concept that customers can reduce load on peak days and pay less is solid,” says Bill Fields, a senior advisor to the Maryland People's Council and chairman of the electricity committee for the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates. “That1s been going on a while. It is a question, however, of whether the advanced meter initiatives are the most cost effective way to accomplish that. We have proven methods already. What more does it achieve for us to do advanced meters?”

Consider Baltimore Gas & Electric, which plans to replace meters that have a long lifespan and which have not been fully depreciated: To complete the job, it will cost around $500 million and consumer advocates there are unconvinced of the professed benefits. Beyond the high price tag, they say that the utility already has a “cycling program” whereby it can turn off air conditioners during peak hours.

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Twitter and Facebook for utilities
by Kate Rowland

Back in October, I got together for a chat with E SOURCE’ s Matthew Burks about utilities and the social media space. Following our initial discussion, I called him again last week to dig deeper into what is, for many companies (the electric utility industry included), still a muddied morass they’ d rather not broach unless they absolutely have to.

However, “absolutely have to” is rapidly become the rule, rather than the exception. No longer the sole purview of the young and extremely tech-savvy, social networking is quickly becoming a must-have for any company navigating the news and views of the day (including those of the man on the street), and electric utilities are not immune.”

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