CompTIA Blog

During this year’s Breakaway Conference in Washington, D.C., we saw a large number of participants take place in the first ever CompTIA Tech Summit. These members heard from expert panels regarding healthcare IT and cybersecurity. The Summit provided members with critical insight into the future of the industry and how what happens in Congress affects it all.With that in mind, we also saw dozens of members stop by the CompTIA public advocacy booth during the trade show portion of the conference ...

With a variety of football training camps opening up, ranging from peewee league to the NFL, I thought it appropriate to use a couple of sports analogies in this post. When the games get into full swing, inevitably teams get into pressure situations on the field. Typically, it’s a tie game with just one score separating the winner and loser—and time ticking away. The coach often calls a play where the receivers “go deep” to get the ball across the goal line. Rather th ...

TIS & Partners, a structural design firm based in Japan, has developed a construction material that is better than concrete. The new material, called CO2 Structure, hardens in one day whereas concrete takes 28 days to fully cure. CO2 Structure is also more stable than concrete, with a tensile strength at least 2.5 times greater.Why am I writing about concrete on an IT blog? Because I think it highlights the importance of continuing to innovate in areas that might be viewed as basic commoditi ...

Small and medium-sized technology businesses have the expertise, knowledge and skill sets to help the U.S. healthcare industry advance its use of new IT tools, but barriers may keep many of them on the sidelines, according to a new CompTIA white paper, “Health IT: The Essential Role of Small IT Solution Providers”. The paper focuses on opportunities to increase participation by IT solution providers, including: Providing additional re-training options that focus on health IT, Int ...

A look at the week of August 8 in public advocacy for the IT channel:  This week, cuts in the debt deal could hurt federal cybersecurity programs.  Steven VanRoekel, formerly of Microsoft, is the new White House CIO.  Experts offered predictions and advice on mobile security at the CompTIA Tech Summit on cybersecurity. Debt Deal Could Be a Blow for Cybersecurity — The $2.1 trillion debt-cap pact that Congress passed could hurt economic and national security as agencies postpone plans to invest i ...

At least one summer camp for kids has much more to do with megabytes than mosquito bites. TECHie Camp gives students third-grade through eighth-grade hands-on experience with everything from robotics to app development to web programming. The camp is operated in five states by TECH CORPS, an organization that partners with K-12 schools around the country to reach young people with life-changing technological learning experiences. TECH CORPS’ dedication to equipping the next generation of techn ...

It was standing room only at CompTIA’s Tech Summit last Thursday in Washington, D.C., as channel members, business owners and reporters crowded into the Washington Hilton for a Q&A and panel discussion around two topics: cloud computing and mobility.We’re used to hearing about the efficient and cost-effective features of the cloud but the first panel discussion, Security & Cloud Migration Challenges for Business and Government, focused on the darker side— What security questions are crea ...

At least one summer camp for kids has much more to do with megabytes than mosquito bites.TECHie Camp gives students third-grade through eighth-grade hands-on experience with everything from robotics to app development to web programming. The camp is operated in five states by TECH CORPS, an organization that partners with K-12 schools around the country to reach young people with life-changing technological learning experiences.TECH CORPS’ dedication to equipping the next generation of technolog ...

There is a common problem amongst technology business owners. That commonality is failure to answer a question about their business that typically starts out with, “What are the steps you use to do X?”Sometimes it’s dependent on the subject, but often this question can’t be clearly answered. The subject could be sales, marketing, financial, service delivery, employee or even client related. Regardless of the question, there is a relatively high chance that silence will be the response when a bus ...

Enacted last year, the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 established an “Intermediary Lending Pilot Program” to provide direct loans to non-profit intermediaries for the purpose of making loans to small business.  This pilot program will terminate after three years.  Under this pilot, loans of as high as $1 million will be made to 20 organizations in 2011, and these organizations are required to use this money to make small business loans of as high as $200,000 in mostly underserved markets.This p ...

Legal professionals are among the earliest tech adopters, at least pertaining to the toys they love to buy (whether they need them or not). From iPads to the latest mobile smart phone devices, many lawyers enjoy being on the “cutting edge” in all aspects of their lives. With an estimated 1.2 million licensed attorneys in the U.S. according to the American Bar Association—almost 75 percent of them in a private practice—it’s a market that solution providers need to be actively involved in. With un ...

The main challenge to successfully implementing health IT isn’t the technology aspect, but rather how to understand, digitize and improve clinician workflow, speakers at the CompTIA Tech Summit said on Thursday. “You are re-engineering the way medicine is practiced in healthcare settings,” said Bethany Gilboard, director of health technologies for the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. Physicians can sometimes be resistant to a new model of patient care, said Charles J ...

Cybersecurity is a growing concern for virtually every industry, thus creating a growing demand for professionals with security skills. Cyber foundations is the second fastest growing job field in the U.S. between now and 2018, second only to healthcare. But where are these people going to come from? A hot-button topic at CompTIA Breakaway, Joseph Cuenco, executive director at The Science Center of Pinellas County in Florida, gave CAPP Academic education leaders a glimpse into the innovative cu ...

Cybersecurity experts at the CompTIA Tech Summit today shared a chilling scenario of the current threat level in the world of mobile devices and applications"Right now mobile security is a pretty dicey place," said Andrew Hoog, chief investigative officer, viaForensics. "It's too much for an IT department to take on, but it's too big an issue to ignore. It's a massive hole.""The numbers of users, devices and applications are massive," said Brian Contos, director, global security and risk managem ...

Security considerations in a cloud computing universe are real, but not much different than the threats organizations wrestle with today in a traditional networking environment."This is not a new set of issues," said Ellen Rubin, founder, CloudSwitch. "The issues are the same that you have in your own internal environment."Rubin was one of the speakers on a "Security and Cloud Migration" panel at the inaugural CompTIA Tech Summit, co-located with CompTIA Breakaway 2011.Just like in-house IT depa ...