The all-volunteer force makes for a stronger military, according to most military officers and observers. And no one expects a draft again any time soon. But the down side to that is a looser and looser connection between the average citizen and the military’s uniformed personnel. One Navy reservist is trying to bring some understanding back into public consciousness. Lt. Cmdr. Daniel Bernardi is director of the Veteran Documentary Corps.

Federal retirees don’t have to worry about the specter of a chained CPI, at least not yet. But that doesn’t mean some other changes could be on the way that could have a big impact on your retirement plans.

Related Links: CBO Report: Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2014 to 2023

Chained Explained

A new report from the Pentagon today says overall reports of sexual assaults at the country’s three military academies declined during the most recent school year. But DoD says it doesn’t have enough data to determine whether or not fewer sexual assaults are actually happening.

Your own smartphone could be the biggest security weakness for your agency this year. Howard Schmidt is former cyber-security coordinator of the Obama Administration. He’s now executive director of Software Assurance Forum for Excellence in Code and a partner in the strategic advisory firm Ridge-Schmidt Cyber.

Schmidt picks his t top three cybersecurity trends for 2014:

1. Targeting mobile devices will increase as use of mobile devices are increasingly used in the business world.

2. Exploitation of software for zero-day vulnerabilities will become big business at the same time software developers will take key steps to develop software that have less vulnerabilities and more secure.

3. While the cloud providers continue to build more and better security, the focus for exploitation will move to the end user as the weakest link.