The FISMA Focus IPD

From: Time

From online drug bazaars to virtual currency tax shelters, the growing anonymous web has many corners of Washington concerned

By Jay Newton-Small

Washington has no idea what to make of the Dread Pirate Roberts.

As Lev Grossman and I write in this week’s cover story, the Dread Pirate Roberts allegedly ran the Silk Road, the world’s most successful online drug bazaar, until the feds caught him earlier this month. His real name, according to a 39-page federal complaint against him, is Ross Ulbricht, 29. He supposedly took the pseudonym from a character in the movie and book, The Princess Bride. In the Silk Road, DPR, as his followers called him, created a business model for anyone wanting to sell illicit items online using free encryption software called Tor and the virtually anonymous crypto-currency Bitcoin. Though the feds have taken Silk Road offline, there are plenty of folks lining up to be the next Dread Pirate Roberts.

From: Modern Healthcare

By Joseph Conn

The HIPAA privacy and security framework could be broadened as Congress and several federal regulatory agencies outside of healthcare grapple with privacy and security concerns created by mobile and other newer technologies, a Washington privacy expert told members of the American Health Information Management Association on Wednesday.

“There are all kinds of companies gathering all kinds of health information and not having anything to do with HIPAA,” said Kirk Nahra, a lawyer with Wiley Rein, during a session on “Next Generation Privacy and Security Issues” at the AHIMA convention in Atlanta. “This is now the biggest hotspot for the government on privacy and security.”

From: InformationWeek/Government

National Institute of Standards and Technology senior scientist Ron Ross honored for creating risk management framework.

Patience Wait

The federal cybersecurity community on Tuesday honored some of this year’s outstanding achievers who have helped improve computer security in the government, including one of its own for his work establishing cybersecurity requirements for federal agencies.

(ISC)2, the not-for-profit organization for information security, awarded Dr. Ronald Ross, senior fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the inaugural Lynn F. McNulty Tribute Award at its annual Government Information Security Leadership Award gala. Ross received the award for his visionary work in leading the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) implementation project and serving as principal architect of the NIST Risk Management Framework.

From: InformationWeek/Government

Publicly accessible data can add trillions of dollars in value to global economies such as education, says U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Elena  Malykhina

Open data can add $3 trillion to $5 trillion a year in value to key sectors of the global economy such as education, transportation and electricity, finds a new report by McKinsey & Company.

From: Bloomberg

By Roger Runningen

President Barack Obama conferred with Brian Moynihan, chief executive officer of Bank of America Corp. (BAC), along with corporate leaders from consumer, utility and defense companies as the administration prepares standards intended to enhance U.S. computer-network security.

Amid reports of widespread hacking traced to China, Obama in February ordered development of voluntary cybersecurity standards for companies operating vital national infrastructure such as power grids and air-traffic control systems.

The initial plan developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology was published in the federal register today. Final guidelines are due by February 2014