General News

House leaders on Thursday demanded a review of cyberattacks that defaced Web sites of several House members and committees after Wednesday's State of the Union address. All 49 of the hacked sites are operated by the Alexandria-based firm GovTrends, which suffered similar attacks in August affecting 18 House Web sites.

Most information technology executives expect a major cybersecurity incident -- causing an outage lasting at least 24 hours, failure of a company or loss of life -- within the next five years, according to a survey by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the security firm McAfee. The survey, which covered 600 IT executives in 14 countries, found special concern about the Internet connections involving critical infrastructure, such as networks controlling utility and financial systems.

Security experts say the Internet Explorer flaw used in the cyberattacks on Google and other U.S. companies late last year was likely found on the thriving black market for "zero-day" -- undisclosed and unpatched -- exploits. The flaw in question could have been worth as much as $40,000 on the black market, according to Pedram Amini, manager of the Zero Day Initiative at the security firm TippingPoint.

A Senate panel grilled Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and National Telecommunications and Information Administration Administrator Lawrence Strickling on Thursday over the time the agencies were taking in disbursing broadband stimulus grants, noting, "We're getting calls from our constituents." Locke said the government has streamlined its evaluation and review process for the second and third rounds of funding.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says that cloud computing is especially well-suited for public-safety agencies, even beyond questions of cost and scalability. "It has a fundamental assumption that software is built from the get-go with collaboration," he said at the software firm's annual Public Safety Symposium this week.

Officials at a Potomac-area high school are investigating a breach of the school's grading system by students. Churchill High School, which had the second-highest average SAT score in the country last year, left a recorded phone message for parents on Wednesday saying some grades might have been corrupted in the incident.

The Senate on Thursday voted along party lines to raise the U.S. debt limit by $1.9 trillion to a record $14.3 trillion. The size of the increase means that the Senate will not have to face the issue again before the November elections.

President Obama, Vice President Biden and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner took to the road on Thursday to pitch Obama's jobs programs, with Obama and Biden announcing $8 billion in high-speed rail grants and Geithner touring factories in Minneapolis. Other stops on the tour will offer more details on a proposed tax credit for small businesses that hire new employees.
Related:
Senate Democrats to unveil jobs measures next week - CongressDaily AM, Jan. 29

Ben Bernanke won Senate confirmation for a second term as head of the Federal Reserve on Thursday, but the 30 opposing votes were the most ever received for the position. One analyst said Bernanke's survival leaves him in a "weakened state" as Congress considers legislation to curtail the Fed's authority.

Microsoft on Thursday reported a 60 percent increase in profit for its second quarter, beating analysts' expectations by a significant margin in large part because of strong sales of its Windows 7 operating system. Microsoft said the quarter saw little growth in corporate spending, but added, "Our general view is a recovery will occur starting this calendar year and gradually over the next several years."

The Federal Trade Commission is urging Facebook, Apple and other Silicon Valley companies to do more to protect consumer privacy on their own. "Apple requires all developers to submit potential apps for review," says Pamela Jones Harbour, commissioner of the FTC. "Through that process, the company could do more to regulate privacy disclosures."

President Obama's failure to mention health-care information technology in his State of the Union speech this week -- the first of four such speeches to omit it -- has some in the field concerned that the administration's support may be faltering. But others, like Electronic Health Record Association head Justin Barnes, are less worried, noting, "Health IT, specifically EHRs, create the essential infrastructure in furthering his agenda to promote public health and wellness, innovations in clinical research and to prevent bioterrorism."

The Environmental Protection Agency has issued interim guidance on how employees should use social media on the job. While a final policy remains pending, a memo circulated this week urges EPA employees to obtain a supervisor's approval before representing the agency online, and not to post opinions outside their regular duties.

A study commissioned by the Social Security Administration finds that a pilot health information exchange program, MedVirginia, has generated $2 million in additional revenues for providers in six months. The IBM project also cut the processing time for disability support determinations nearly in half, the study said.

The National Institute for Standards and Technology plans to develop standards for judging how easy it is to use various health information technology systems. NIST is seeking contractors to develop a "usability framework" for such systems that can analyze how people react to different systems' interfaces.

President Obama's call to double U.S. export growth by 2015 is meeting with skepticism from trade experts, who say fulfilling it would require unlikely changes by stakeholders ranging from the Chinese government to the liberal wing of the Democratic party. "It's like someone dropped a paragraph from a Bush or a Clinton speech, given the low profile the administration has accorded trade so far," said David Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration Commerce official.
Related:
Indian firms unperturbed by Obama outsourcing language - Business Standard (India), Jan. 29

Some trade experts say the sheer size of China's population has let many multinational companies to neglect what might be a larger market for consumer business in a slightly smaller country: India. India's middle class numbers some 300 million, versus 200 million or less in China, and they are in a better position to spend, according to Minxin Pei, director of the Keck Center for International & Strategic Studies.

A company started by two Indian technology specialists that has begun performing standardized tests on engineering and computer science graduates in India estimates that only 4.2 percent are truly qualified to work in a software product firm. Aspiring Minds bases its findings on thousands of results of the AMCAT test, covering analytical, verbal and quantitative skill, as well as personality characteristics.

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