In IT circles, the move to the cloud may have become a broadly acknowledged inevitability, but the legal and regulatory frameworks surrounding cloud computing in developed and emerging nations remain a highly unsettled proposition, according to a new study from a leading software trade association.
WASHINGTON -- In the federal government, which carries a roughly $80 billion annual IT budget, the question of cloud computing is no longer a question of "if," but rather "how," and "how soon."
Blasting a comprehensive cybersecurity bill introduced earlier this week in the Senate as a senseless recipe for more unwarranted regulation, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on Thursday that he and six Republican colleagues would bring forward their own legislation when the Senate returns from recess at the beginning of next month.
Amid mounting budget pressures and a maturing set of technologies, the federal government is poised for the rapid adoption of cloud computing services over the next several years, according to one of the senior agency leaders helping craft a government-wide cloud strategy.
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on Friday pitched a message of hands-off government to a regional technology group here, arguing for an innovation policy that would see lower corporate taxes, fewer regulations and a more generous immigration policy for skilled workers.
Cybersecurity experts on Wednesday warned members of a House subcommittee against racing to legislation that would establish an overly burdensome regulatory framework for safeguarding digital systems against attacks, instead urging a more limited approach that would clear away legal impediments such as the prohibitions against sharing critical threat information.
With so much attention focused on online censorship in highly restrictive countries such as China, Iran and Syria, the discussion of global Internet freedom often has tended to exclude the large class of more moderate nations with rapidly growing online populations with only a rudimentary set of laws and policies for the Web.
As the federal government works to craft a strategy for deploying mobile devices and applications across its sprawling workforce, the technology chiefs who will be leading the transition are embarking on what they see as a fundamental overhaul of the government's approach to IT, updating longstanding policies to respond more quickly to the pace of innovation that has been transforming enterprises across the private sector.
For large multinational companies, or even smaller outfits with modest aspirations of foreign expansion, the patchwork of global laws and regulations governing security and privacy can present a major compliance challenge.
As the Federal Trade Commission prepares to release a new framework of privacy principles to prod the Internet industry toward tighter protections for consumers' online data, one of the agency's commissioners said that she has grown particularly alarmed at the unchecked actions of data brokers to mine, analyze and potentially sell sensitive information.
After more than two years of protracted negotiations and numerous legislative rewrites, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is preparing to schedule a floor debate for a bill that would overhaul the country's cybersecurity framework, a senior aide to the Nevada Democrat said on Tuesday.
Supporters of a pair of controversial anti-piracy bills working their way through Congress anticipate that the measures are heading toward their endgame, following word from the sponsors of the legislation that some of the most objectionable provisions would be dropped.
Opponents of controversial anti-piracy legislation are gearing up for a major fight in both the House and the Senate as they press for support for an alternative bill they say would avoid draconian measures that, if enacted, could create major security vulnerabilities in the architecture of the Internet.
The Obama administration yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas unveiled an ambitious new initiative to remake the way the federal <a href="http://www.cio.com/topic/3133/government">government</a> approaches mobile technology, soliciting ideas from the public for how federal agencies can tap mobile devices and apps to operate more efficiently and better serve citizens.
2012 promises to be a busy year for lawmakers and regulators as they continue to shape and debate a growing array of issues in the arena of technology policy.