The National Initiative for Cybersecurity Careers and Studies will provide an online resource for cybersecurity career, education and training information, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Thursday in launching the program, part of its U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team. The resources at niccs.us-cert.gov constitute a “robust, searchable catalog” of programs and certifications, letting users find trainings based on location, preferred delivery method, specialty area or proficiency level, DHS said. It was developed “in close partnership” with several agencies, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology, departments of Defense and Education, offices of the Director of National Intelligence and Personnel Management, and National Science Foundation.
The U.S. government needs to develop a constructive long-term strategy to best engage the ITU and its members to maximize value and effectiveness of the organization’s core mandate, while addressing efforts to expand its remit, the U.S. ITU Association said in a draft policy document to the U.S. government that we obtained. Many U.S. companies doing business internationally are regulated by and must obtain operating authorizations from national regulators to do business in those countries, it said. ITU, through its regional offices, leadership, and events and activities, plays an indirect but important role in the development of national regulations in many developing and emerging economies, it said. U.S. policy should “seek to maximize” U.S. influence to ensure “the right policy directions” are taken, it said. Efforts to expand ITU’s mandate beyond its core competency should be curtailed, it said. The U.S. government “should fund the ITU at a level that will allow the U.S. to continue its active engagement and leadership” in the organization and its working groups, including ITU Council, to protect U.S. interests and promote policy principles, it said. Some executives had suggested the U.S. stop funding the organization. Relationships, especially with developing countries, need to be rebuilt, it said. The U.S. should help boost ITU’s “transparency and openness of its processes,” it said. “It is, however, important that the U.S. not appear to sanction a claim that the ITU is multi-stakeholder in the broadest sense,” it said.
All emergency beacons that operate on frequency 406 MHz must be registered with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the FCC Enforcement Bureau said in an enforcement advisory (http://bit.ly/155GR1e). False alarms from or failures to register emergency beacons may result in substantial monetary penalties up to $112,500 for any single act, it said. The three types of emergency beacons for transmitting distress signals are Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons for maritime use, Emergency Locator Transmitters for aviation use and Personal Locator Beacons (PLBs) for land-based use, it said. Even a brief inadvertent activation on frequency 406 MHz from an EPIRB “can generate a false alert and is a violation of FCC rules, thereby subjecting the operator to potential monetary penalties up to $112,500.” PLBs are licensed by rule and an individual license is not required, it said.
Georgia’s House Bill 282 is reigniting controversies and conversation on whether states should limit municipal broadband networks. Other states have debated and sometimes passed such laws in the past. The bill has attracted heavy media attention since it was introduced in early February, and last Friday FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski discouraged state legislators from passing such laws (CD Feb 19 p11). The bill proposes forbidding municipal networks if a region’s residents connect at speeds of 1.5 Mbps, a provision which has attracted intense opposition as well as support.
Georgia’s House Bill 282 is reigniting controversies and conversation on whether states should limit municipal broadband networks. Other states have debated and sometimes passed such laws in the past. The bill has attracted heavy media attention since it was introduced in early February, and last Friday FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski discouraged state legislators from passing such laws. The bill proposes forbidding municipal networks if a region’s residents connect at speeds of 1.5 Mbps, a provision which has attracted intense opposition as well as support.
ORLANDO, Fla. -- ProSource is reviving efforts to create Signature vendor programs to develop channel-specific strategies with independent dealers, BrandSource Executive Vice President Jim Ristow told us at the group’s meeting here.
BRUSSELS -- More sophisticated devices, more use of mobile applications and increased network speeds are expected to be the main drivers for commercial services over the next 10 years, executives working on a European Commission (EC) study said. Executives differed over the impact of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. Wi-Fi for network offloading and small cells may be integrated in the future, an Ericsson executive said. The study focuses on the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the U.K. with an extrapolation of results to the 27 countries in the EU.
The FCC required emergency alert system participants to immediately bar unauthorized use of common alerting protocol (CAP) dissemination of EAS alerts to radio and TV stations and subscription-video providers alerts via the Internet, broadcast industry officials said. They said Tuesday’s FCC advisory came after some stations in Michigan and maybe Montana, too, aired a bogus alert about zombies when their CAP systems had security breached, from what appear to be non-U.S. Internet Protocol addresses. CAP isn’t yet being relied on by federal or state agencies to distribute warnings about bad weather and other hazards, since they also transmit those announcements by broadcasts. All EAS participants are required to be able to get the alerts in that format from a Federal Emergency Management Agency website (WID Sept 17 p2), and industry officials said the unauthorized access is a reminder to take security precautions that the affected stations apparently didn’t.
The FCC required emergency alert system participants to immediately bar unauthorized use of common alerting protocol-triggered EAS alerts to radio and TV stations and subscription-video providers via the Internet, broadcast industry officials said. They said Tuesday’s FCC advisory came after some stations in Michigan and maybe Montana, too, aired a bogus alert about zombies when their CAP systems had security breached, from what appear to be non-U.S. Internet Protocol addresses. CAP isn’t yet being relied on by federal or state agencies to distribute warnings about bad weather and other hazards, since they also transmit those announcements by broadcasts. All EAS participants are required to be able to get the alerts in that format from a Federal Emergency Management Agency website (CD Sept 17 p6), and industry officials said the unauthorized access is a reminder to take security precautions that the affected stations apparently didn’t.
The U.S. and Europe will begin an 18-month process to agree on a "comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union," President Obama said in his state of the union address Feb. 12. The goal is an agreement that goes beyond traditional tariff and trade issues, such as would be in a Free Trade Agreement, officials said Feb. 13, and include such things as regulations and standards that can be barriers to trade, as well as intellectual property rights.