http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/18/AR2007031801072.html By Cecilia Kang Washington Post Staff Writer March 19, 2007 There was the stolen laptop that put the identities of millions of veterans and soldiers at risk. Then flooding shut down part of the IRS building, prompting a scramble for electronic files and equipment. In the wake of such publicized mishaps, security and privacy issues are taking center stage at this year's FOSE trade show, Washington's largest convention for federal, state and local government information technology contractors, as a host of companies peddle new products and services aimed at sealing and protecting the government's data and networks. The two-day show at the Washington Convention Center begins tomorrow, and organizers hope to draw 20,000 people. The event comes as government spending is likely to be more restrained compared with that of previous years. In the past two years, the rate of growth in spending on office technologies has steadily declined and is projected to increase only slightly over the next year, said Bill Loomis, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. The Office of Management and Budget has allocated $65.5 billion for information technology for the government in fiscal 2008, up 2.6 percent from President Bush's 2007 request of $63.8 billion. "Government clients want to save money and are looking at areas where they can be more efficient, reduce redundancies and find cost savings," Loomis said. Exhibitors such as Hewlett-Packard and Altova have fine-tuned their marketing pitches, promoting their products and services as "integration technologies," hoping to persuade government clients to buy their wares with the promise of making office networks more efficient and less costly to run. Yet even as federal spending for information technology moderates, new security products and services will dominate the booths of the 500 exhibitors at the show this week. Of the 150 new products to be on display, the majority will be related to securing systems and devices and making technology more resistant to natural disasters and terrorist attacks, according to organizer Bill Howell, vice president of the company running the show, 1105 Government Information Group. Demand for security products ramped up after the Sept. 11 attacks and the highly publicized theft and security problems of the last year, he said. When a Department of Veterans Affairs laptop and external hard drive were stolen from an analyst's home last year, millions of veterans' names and Social Security numbers were put in jeopardy. The department later determined that the data hadn't been accessed, but the episode highlighted how easily a large identity theft could occur. The FBI reported this year that 160 laptops belonging to the agency had been stolen or were missing. Hurricanes on the Gulf Coast and last summer's storms that flooded parts of the region also brought attention to the risk natural disasters pose to agencies. Meganet Corp. of Los Angeles, for example, will show off its fingerprint authentication technology, which has been adopted by the VA and Transportation departments for portable gear. Austin-based Pragma Systems Inc. will demonstrate software for authentication and encryption for Windows-based servers, desktop computers and mobile devices. The need for security products has become particularly crucial as government workers become more mobile, with laptops, gadgets and a greater emphasis by some agencies for employees to work from home. In a survey by Cisco Systems, four out of 10 federal technology officials said they worry about security breaches involving employees who take their work on the road, communicating with agencies via the Internet or by phone. "You just have to look at the [heavy] traffic in Washington to know why teleworking is top on the list of so many federal employees," said Steve O'Keeffe, president of O'Keeffe & Co. in Alexandria, a marketing and consulting firm for technology contractors. "As workers look for ways to make their technology more mobile, smaller, cheaper and faster, issues of security and privacy become critically important." Copyright 2007 The Washington Post Company _________________________________________ Visit the InfoSec News Security Bookstore http://www.shopinfosecnews.org
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