Michael Cooney

The myriad threats to public, private and U.S. government networks is getting a ton of attention in Washington, D.C., this week as the House gets ready to debate yet another cybersecurity bill.

At a hearing -- "America is Under Cyber Attack: Why Urgent Action is Needed" -- a number of security experts spoke about the impact of attacks on the critical IT systems that make companies and the country run.

Few things can ruin your day like a big traffic jam. The problem is, most experts say such heavy congestion found daily on your favorite highway, is only going to get worse.

According to the Department of Transportation (DOT), congestion costs America an estimated $200 billion a year in lost travel time and fuel, and drivers in metropolitan areas spend more than one-quarter of their total annual travel time in congested conditions.

IBM said it found surprising improvements in Internet security such as a reduction in application security vulnerabilities, exploit code and spam, but it also noted that those improvements come with a price: Attackers have been forced to rethink their tactics.

IBM's security group, X-Force, released its 2011 Trend and Risk Report which surveys some 4,000 customers, and the report showed the following:

The leaders of the Department of Defense and the Federal Bureau of Investigation this week separately expressed concern over the increasing numbers of cyberattacks, with FBI Director Robert Mueller (pictured, right) saying that while terrorism remains the FBI's top priority, "in the not too distant future, we anticipate that the cyberthreat will pose the No. 1 threat to our country."

Speaking at the RSA Conference, Mueller said state-sponsored hackers are patient and calculating. They have the time, the money and the resources to burrow in, and to wait. They may come and go, conducting reconnaissance and exfiltrating bits of seemingly innocuous information -- information that in the aggregate may be of high value. "You may discover one breach, only to find that the real damage has been done at a much higher level," he said.

NASA's always interesting CIO today posted a tribute to Geeks.

Linda Cureton, who defined herself as NASA's "Geek CIO" in the post stated: "From his book Leading Geeks, Paul Glen defines [Geeks] as '... the highly intelligent, usually introverted, extremely valuable, independent-minded, hard-to-find, difficult-to-keep technology workers who are essential to the future of the organization." Another characteristic of Geeks, according to Glen is that they lots of love, caffeine, carbohydrates, and saturated fat.'

The FBI today released a background check it did on Apple's founder Steve Jobs when he was being considered for a position on the President's Export Council under George H.W. Bush in 1991.

The 191-page document, released under the Freedom of Information Act, includes documents related to a 1985 investigation of a bomb threat against Apple and a host of other observations, many of them not surprising -- he was driven, strong-willed -- and some not so flattering -- he could twist the truth.

The Department of Justice today said a man who sent malicious code to Marriott International Corporation, threatening to reveal confidential information taken from the company's computers if Marriott did not offer him a job, has been sent to prison for his criminal endeavor.

Attila Nemeth, 26, a Hungarian citizen, was sentenced to 30 months in prison and three years of supervised release.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice teamed up for a coast-to-coast crackdown on identity thieves this week.

The coast-to-coast law enforcement onslaught arrested 105 people in 23 states and included indictments, arrests and the execution of search warrants involving the potential theft of thousands of identities and taxpayer refunds, the IRS stated. In all, 939 criminal charges are included in the 69 indictments and information related to identity theft.

Will mobile payments become common, and what will the impact of that technology be?

Those are but a couple of the burning questions the Federal Trade Commission hopes to glean answers to at a workshop the agency said it will hold in April where consumers, industry experts and technologists will convene to discuss a wide range of mobile payment issues.

The FBI said it arrested a computer programmer in New York this week and charged him with stealing proprietary software code from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The software known as the Government-Wide Accounting and Reporting Program (GWA) handles all manner of U.S. government financial transactions.

IN OTHER NEWS: Cutting-edge electronics will require US to revamp auto defect investigations

The watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office this week issued a report that takes a look at what information, or guidance as they call it, is available to help government agencies and public sector companies bulk up their cybersecurity efforts.

Since a GAO report late last year showed reports of security incidents from federal agencies have increased more than 650 percent over the past five years, the need for a community of help on the cybersecurity front is needed.

So long as people click on unsolicited attachments in e-mail, scammers will invent new ways to take their money, identities and more.

The FBI last week issued a warning on one such new Internet blight called "Gameover," which, once ensconced on your PC, can steal usernames and passwords and defeat common methods of user authentication employed by financial institutions.