Few security practices are as problematic as that nasty old string of
bits known as a password. Experts tell us to make them as long and
complex as possible, never reuse them even as our online accounts
multiply, and store them only in our grey matter. That advice can be
summarized, as security researcher Mikko Hypponen recently
twittered: ”Pick something you can’t remember, then don’t write it
down.”

Tasked with adopting cloud computing as a first option in all IT
projects, federal agencies are now grappling with the hard realities of making the policy work.

Solution providers gathered for Everything Channel's XChange Public Sector conference this week said they were disappointed that the Federal CIO who was driving a cloud computing revolution is apparently throwing in the towel after only two and half years on the job.

Last issue I left you with the tagline, "But what will that future directory look like?" At the recent European Identity Conference (EIC) Michael Schwartz, CEO of GLUU -- with help from Drummond Reed, co-chairman of two OASIS Technical Committees: XRI (Extensible Resource Identifier) and XDI (XRI Data Interchange) -- presented a workshop on "Directories & Federation." It was neither the so-called "LDAP model" of hierarchical, object-oriented directory, nor a standard Relational Database (RDBMS) model of data store.

The 26-page survey report returned a stunning conclusion – though one
not surprising to those familiar with legal contracting for cloud
computing; namely that a majority of cloud providers do not believe data
security is their responsibility - but the customer’s.