"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Like their counterparts in the private sector, information technology managers in the federal government are actively debating whether their agencies should move to a "bring your own device" (BYOD) policy, allowing employee-owned mobile smartphones and tablets devices to be used for work.

As Congress wrestles over cybersecurity legislation related to securing critical infrastructure and the electric power grid, arguments are surfacing on whether the power companies should handle any new federally mandated network protections or whether the U.S. government -- in particular the National Security Agency -- should be in the middle of it.

At the third annual Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) summit today, Michael McConnell, former director of the National Security Agency, urged the audience of 1,200 security experts to do what they can to help build trusted cloud computing systems.

This group of security companies includes several that want to capitalize on technology ideas that were originally devised to serve communities of special interest but could now take on a wider cybersecurity role. Fixmo, for example, has its roots in the National Security Agency where its mobile security makes it possible to run critical applications in sandboxes that are insulated from the rest of the machine, making them less likely to fall victim to malware that might have infected the device.

The National Security Agency is building one of the largest and most expensive data centers as a place to gather and analyze intelligence data.

Microsoft today denied that it has built a backdoor into Windows 7, a concern that surfaced yesterday after a senior National Security Agency (NSA) official testified before Congress that the agency had worked on the operating system.

The National Security Agency (NSA) worked with Microsoft on the development of Windows 7, an agency official acknowledged yesterday during testimony before Congress.

They sometimes call national security the third rail of politics. Touch it and, politically, you're dead.