"Govspace" and cyber-threat preparedness

An interesting read from a former colleague at the state of Michigan with some some even more interesting implications. In essence, we are just migrating the concept of parterning for preparedness and planning onto the Internet. One mission I'd like to see these ISACs tackle is the concept of utlilizing virtual worlds like Second Life - which already has much use and even greater potential for education and training - to help sculpt "govspace" and transform emergency center operations into encrypted, secure virtual meeting rooms where you have maximum access to all the tools you may need for rapid data receipt, analysis, and dissemination. (even in the face of power outages, which are really annoying, but can be overcome to a certain degree with industrial-strength computer batteries, back-up battery banks, online back-up systems (like Carbonite), and gas-fired electrical/power generators.

Regarding Second Life and education, check out these resources from Linden Labs:
http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki
http://secondlifegrid.net/programs/education

Regarding online back-up systems ... here's how Carbonite works:
http://www.carbonite.com/howitworks.aspx
I'm sure there are other out there. Of course, there are always Web-based email
applications (like Google Mail) that have quite sizable online storage capacity, especially
if you incorporate multiple accounts, where one can also store back-up info.


Anyway, I love Lohrmann's concept of "govspace" - we should think about how to best deploy this concept and add it to the lexicon, when we can.


From Government Technology magazine:
Joining the Multi-State Information Sharing & Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) provides many operational benefits to state and local governments. The MS-ISAC is a central resource for gathering and sharing cyber-threat information among states and local governments, according to the MS-ISAC Web site.

The MS-ISAC coordinates actions between the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team and the states. State-specific ISACs are now being built around the country. Michigan, New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas and Florida already share information with local governments, universities, K-12 schools and other public institutions via state ISAC portals and most other states are establishing ISACs. These state-specific ISACs provide a valuable central resource for information sharing within those states.

The Internet radically changed how the public sector delivers services. Securing "govspace," as I call it, requires us to partner in new ways. No matter what you've done in the past, I encourage public CIOs to get involved in their state ISAC efforts. We all need help, and we all need to help each other.

Full article here:
http://www.govtech.com/gt/224394?topic=117671