At a glance.
- Europe's mini-clouds.
- CISA's Capacity Enhancement Guide.
- Ad-blockers at the Pentagon.
Europe’s Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud takes shape.
The EU is developing its own cloud infrastructure alternative in an effort to decrease its dependence on Chinese or American tech companies for virtual networking and data storage. Bloomberg reports that the names of the first thirty-nine companies who will join the European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud have been released, and there are no US or Chinese outfits among them. Nokia Oyj, Ericsson AB, OVH Groupe, SAP SE, and X-Fab Silicon Foundries SE are just a few of the companies involved.
The goal of the alliance is to build new, secure European “mini clouds” separate from the centralized server farms currently controlled by US firms like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. Some US companies have applied for admission to the alliance and are undergoing eligibility checks as the alliance is still accepting applicants. Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton stated, “Data will transform the way we produce, consume and live. Europe has all it takes to lead the ‘big data’ economy.”
CISA publishes Capacity Enhancement Guide.
Executive Gov explains that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Capacity Enhancement Guide, introduced last week, aims to provide organizations with recommendations for protecting their social media accounts on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter from unauthorized intruders. CISA urges organizations to implement credential management by limiting the number of staff with access to the social media accounts and taking advantage of the corporate account feature offered by some platforms. Other recommendations include using multifactor authentication, relying only on trusted devices, vetting third-party vendors, and developing an incident response plan.
US Defense Department employs ad-blocking tools.
In response to an inquiry posed by Senator Ron Wyden (Democrat of Oregon), the US Department of Defense (DOD) confirmed that it does block internet ads in order to protect the department’s sensitive systems from malvertising and data tracking. The DOD’s chief information officer Kelly Fletcher explains, “Web content filter and Sharkseer tools block bad traffic that traverses our internet access points and Cloud Based Internet Isolation (CBII) also isolates all traffic, including ads.”
The Defense Information Systems Agency took over the Sharkseer program, which uses artificial intelligence to detect threats in internet traffic, in 2019. CBII shields DOD staff from threats on non-government websites. The department recently updated its training for teleworkers to provide security guidance for staffers on government issued mobile devices, and also deploys a Mobile Threat Detection capability to spot threatening activity.