There was the stolen laptop that put the identities of millionsof veterans and soldiers at risk. Then flooding shut down part ofthe IRS building, prompting a scramble for electronic files andequipment.
In the wake of such publicized mishaps, security and privacyissues are taking center stage at this year's FOSE trade show,Washington's largest convention for federal, state and localgovernment information technology contractors, as a host ofcompanies peddle new products and services aimed at sealing andprotecting the government's data and networks.
The two-day show at the Washington Convention Center beginstomorrow, and organizers hope to draw 20,000 people. The event comesas government spending is likely to be more restrained compared withthat of previous years.
In the past two years, the rate of growth in spending on officetechnologies has steadily declined and is projected to increase onlyslightly over the next year, said Bill Loomis, an analyst at StifelNicolaus.
The Office of Management and Budget has allocated $65.5 billionfor information technology for the government in fiscal 2008, up 2.6percent from President Bush's 2007 request of $63.8 billion.
"Government clients want to save money and are looking at areaswhere they can be more efficient, reduce redundancies and find costsavings," Loomis said.
Exhibitors such as Hewlett-Packard and Altova have fine-tunedtheir marketing pitches, promoting their products and services as"integration technologies," hoping to persuade government clients tobuy their wares with the promise of making office networks moreefficient and less costly to run.
Yet even as federal spending for information technologymoderates, new security products and services will dominate thebooths of the 500 exhibitors at the show this week. Of the 150 newproducts to be on display, the majority will be related to securingsystems and devices and making technology more resistant to naturaldisasters and terrorist attacks, according to organizer Bill Howell,vice president of the company running the show, 1105 GovernmentInformation Group.
Demand for security products ramped up after the Sept. 11 attacksand the highly publicized theft and security problems of the lastyear, he said.
When a Department of Veterans Affairs laptop and external harddrive were stolen from an analyst's home last year, millions ofveterans' 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 couldoccur. The FBI reported this year that 160 laptops belonging to theagency had been stolen or were missing. Hurricanes on the Gulf Coastand last summer's storms that flooded parts of the region alsobrought attention to the risk natural disasters pose to agencies.
Meganet Corp. of Los Angeles, for example, will show off itsfingerprint authentication technology, which has been adopted by theVA and Transportation departments for portable gear. Austin-basedPragma Systems Inc. will demonstrate software for authentication andencryption for Windows-based servers, desktop computers and mobiledevices.
The need for security products has become particularly crucial asgovernment workers become more mobile, with laptops, gadgets and agreater emphasis by some agencies for employees to work from home.In a survey by Cisco Systems, four out of 10 federal technologyofficials said they worry about security breaches involvingemployees who take their work on the road, communicating withagencies via the Internet or by phone.
"You just have to look at the [heavy] traffic in Washington toknow why teleworking is top on the list of so many federalemployees," said Steve O'Keeffe, president of O'Keeffe & Co. inAlexandria, a marketing and consulting firm for technologycontractors. "As workers look for ways to make their technology moremobile, smaller, cheaper and faster, issues of security and privacybecome critically important."
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