When it comes to storing and handling Big Data, it hardly gets bigger than the United States government. Not only are government data centers some of the largest in the world, they also hold some of the world's most sensitive data – ranging from every Social Security number and its account information to critical intelligence and military data.

And the federal government's data storage just keeps growing, with agencies expecting to add a petabyte – over a thousand terabytes – of additional data over the next two years.

All of that data, however, is only of limited use unless it can be put to work. Government information specialists, like their counterparts in industry, are only now coming to grips with Big Data and the new range of techniques and technologies for applying analytics to it. The effort has been fueled by a $200 million White House commitment to a federal Big Data initiative.

To help with that effort, federal data specialists have been working with IBM, a company that has been on the cutting edge of information technology since before most IT professionals were born.

IBM's Watson technology initiative is not just about winning on Jeopardy. More fundamentally it is about applying advanced analytics tools to sift through Big Data. The goal is to move beyond the comparative rigidity of traditional relational database queries to an analytics that can answer natural-language questions.

And, contrary to the image of bureaucrats looking at the world through a rear-view mirror, IBM and the government want to get answers in real time, to questions ranging from whether social benefits are reaching the intended recipients to whether federal office buildings are using energy efficiently.

The combined effort will not only help make government efforts more efficient. It will also yield improved analysis and management methods for Big Data, methods that will soon find their place in business as well.

The security principles set forth in industry standard ISO/IEC 27002 provide a framework for effective security, built around the cycle of Plan, Do, Check, and Act (PDCA). Many good security products are on the market, but all are designed to meet specific threats – and will not block other threats. At GRT Corp. our security philosophy is built around these words by noted security expert Dr. Bruce Schneier: "Security is not a product, but a process."