October/November 2015 Digital Edition

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Cloud security trending as for government agencies Continued from page 13 its system and completing necessary patches. This may depend upon the specific service level selected, so it is important to understand who has responsibility for this. If the provider is responsible, the agreement should confirm that updates and patches will be implemented in a timely fashion. • Breach notification procedures. The agreement also should detail notification procedures, as well as how and when data can be accessed in the event of a security breach, in addition to any log file access that would be necessary to help determine what happened. The agreement also should be specific about whether or not your agency can bring in an independent forensic team to review how the attack occurred and what remediation steps must be taken. • Disaster recovery. The cloud provider should offer, at a minimum, disaster recovery policies that meet industry standards. Review the provider’s general protections, type of backup services provided and business continuity practices. • The long-term outlook. Once you have made the move to the cloud, it can be hard to transition back out. Accordingly, the agreement should delineate very clearly how long it will take and what steps will be required to retrieve your data if you decide at some point to move out of the cloud. In addition to the points noted above, having a cloud strategy and performing due diligence is essential for an agency considering a move to the cloud. Such due diligence should include a thorough evaluation of the provider’s years of experience, how much content the provider has under contract and the company’s track record protecting data. The cloud can present several benefits, as well as a number of risks. Determining what is best for any government agency involves a careful review of the terms and conditions contained the agreement, plus a calculated, upfront risk/benefit examination, free of any assumptions, to reveal whether the time is right to make a move to the cloud. About the author: Jayne Friedland Holland is Chief Security Officer at NIC Inc. (NASDAQ: EGOV), the country’s dominant provider of egovernment services and secure payment processing. Contact her at jayne@ egov.com. Post Your Video on the Busiest Website in Homeland Security! To Place Your Order or Get Further Information, Contact: Mike Madsen, Publisher, at 732-233-8119, or mmadsen@gsnmagazine.com 26
Intelligent Video Surveillance NSF-supported engineer and vision scientist Al Bovic awarded Emmy for tool that predicts perceived video quality 27 September 30, <strong>2015</strong> – Sometimes it’s not so much what you see as what you don’t see that matters. alan bovik led a team of researchers that, in the early 2000s, invented a tool to predict how the average person will perceive the quality of an image or a video. The tool allows broadcasters and streaming video sites to compress and distribute video with minimal distortion. So, every time you don’t see jagged images, blurring, glitches or the dreaded spinning wheel of death on tv or the internet, that’s likely thanks in part to the Structural Similarity index that bovik and his research team created. For his efforts, bovik and three of his colleagues will each receive television’s highest honor, an individual Primetime emmy award for Outstanding achievement in engineering Development from the television academy (formerly the academy of television arts and Sciences). bovik--the ernest J. cockrell endowed chair in engineering at The University of texas at austin- -will receive his emmy statuette at the Primetime emmy engineering awards ceremony at loew’s Hollywood Hotel on Oct. 28, <strong>2015</strong>. two of bovik’s former PhD students, Zhou Wang (now at the University of Waterloo, canada) and Hamid Sheikh (now at Samsung, Dallas) will also receive individual emmy statuettes for this work, along with eero Simoncelli, their collaborator at NYU. “an engineering emmy award is bestowed upon an individual, company or organization for developments in engineering that are either so extensive an improvement on existing methods, or so innovative in nature, that they materially affect the transmission, recording or reception of television,” the television academy wrote. bovik was initially surprised about the emmy--in fact, he found out about the award while reading his email in the morning, on his way to brush his teeth. eventually, his surprise gave way to appreciation. “i’m very happy and grateful that people are recognizing our work,” bovik said. “i so appreciate NSF support of our research and our students, who are so much of the inspiration and perspiration behind research success. if you have good ideas, this kind of support can change your life.” Compression issues Due to limits in bandwidth and the ever-expanding Al Bovic number of streaming videos, broadcasters need to compress their video before sending it over the airwaves or the internet. This compression can cause a range of problems, from blurring to blackouts, which make watching a broadcast unpleasant or distracting. “What you would like to be able to do is have a reliable way of determine acceptable levels of perceived quality--as a human viewer would report it,” bovik said. “This is particularly important to cable and satellite video content carriers in regards to how much they compress the television signal.” “it’s not like a certain compression level will give the same quality for every video. You actually have to do something content dependent, and being able to predict the perceived quality of a compressed video while accounting for content makes a big More on page 28
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Page 9 and 10: Key takeaways from the research rep
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Page 17: Oslo Airport selects Qognify, forme
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