Cybersecurity Update – Tune in weekdays at 30 minutes past the hour for the latest cybersecurity news on The Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Amy Morris (6-10 a.m.) and The DorobekInsider with Chris Dorobek (3-7 p.m.). Listen live at FederalNewsRadio.com or on the radio at 1500 and 820 AM in the Washington, D.C. metro area.

• Fort Meade will become the center of U.S. cyber defense. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made the announcement during a promotion ceremony for Army General Keith Alexander. General Alexander will serve as the first commander of the new cyber defense agency. He currently heads the National Security Agency, which is also located at Fort Meade. His appointment to head U.S. Cyber Command was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on May 7th.
• Attacks using poisoned PDF files have leaped to the top of the threat list. Symantec reports that suspicious PDF files skyrocketed in 2009 to represent 49 percent of Web-based attacks that the company detected, up from only 11 percent in 2008. According to statistics from major security companies, PCWorld reports the next-most-common attack, involving an Internet Explorer flaw, was far behind at 18 percent. According to security experts, changing a setting in the current version of Adobe Reader can help. Select Preferences, Trust Manager, and deselect Allow opening of non-PDF file attachments with external applications.
• Harris Corporation is building the country’s first cyber integration center and is developing what it hopes will be a secure business model for cloud computing. Dale Meyerrose is the former chief information officer at the Office of National Intelligence. Today, he is vice president and general manager at Harris Cyber Integrated Solutions. He wants to see the new integration center change the way agencies look at cloud computing. The Harris Cyber Integration Center should be fully operational by the end of 2010.

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