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FedBytes: Cybersecurity holes, 50 awesome blogs and more on BYOD

Hardware, software and tech news from across the government and around the country. This week: top blogs and BYOD.

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Matt is a regular contributor to the CDW Tech Magazines.

Cybersecurity continues to be one of the hottest — and most important — topics in federal IT. More on that and 50 government technology blogs you should be reading.

Army general Keith Alexander, commander of U.S. Cyber Command, said the United States is not sufficiently prepared for a serious cyberattack. According to Alexander, U.S. preparation for a cyberattack on its network infrastructure rates a 3 on a scale of 10. Educating users who are not digital natives about the demands of cybersecurity is a major challenge in addressing the shortcoming’s in preparedness, he said. Read more on the Air Force Website.
Sure, Stuxnet was a masterpiece of malware. But I like the style of hackers who wrote a program that took over computers at an Iranian nuclear facility and forced them to play AC/DC at maximum volume. Read more on Mashable.
Check out the list of 50 Must-Read State and Local Government IT Blogs from our sister publication StateTech. Read more on StateTechMagazine.com.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently released two guides on cybersecurity. NIST is asking for feedback on “Guide to Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems” and “Guide to Malware Incident Prevention and Handling for Desktops and Laptops.” Read more on FedScoop.
A mobile client must be able to authenticate itself to a server it’s connecting to, but not having the server authenticated is a vulnerability as well, as attendees at the Black Hat security conference heard recently. Read more on Dark Reading.
Federal agencies are shrinking their presence on the web. The inventory of federal websites was roughly 1,500 in October 2011, but that number has shrunk to 1,122 as agencies consolidate their web presence under a government-wide initiative. The General Services Administration is expected to release updated dot-gov consolidation guidance in November. Read more on NextGov.
As if BYOD wasn’t complicated enough. Byte’s Larry Seltzer spells out how shared data plans can confuse matters even further. Read more on Information Week.