FederalNewsRadio.com reports that FISMA updates have been attempted before in 2008 and 2010 and gone nowhere. 2012 could be different, though.

The article says one area of emphasis seems to be borrowed from the latest food and health regulations. Preference will be given to vendors who do not fry or sauté security into their products.

Lieberman said Congress would encourage agencies to only buy from vendors who “bake” security in from the beginning of development.

“Using the federal government’s purchasing power, I believe would help prod technology companies to produce more secure products, which would then be available to businesses and consumers,” he said.

No word yet on whether steaming is acceptable.

Here’s another area of change to watch.

Our legislation would also provide liability protection for owners and operators who are in compliance with their approved security plans

That sounds familiar. PCI DSS has a similar theory. Many people often ask me if compliance brings complete liability transfer or exclusion. It does not. Changes to FISMA likewise probably will not offer protection against all liability but instead offer some amount of protection — reduce the amount of penalties/fines compared with being breached and also out of compliance.

A study from 2009 tries to explain why bears in Yosemite attack minivans far more than any other vehicle.

From 2001 to 2007 bears broke into 908 vehicles at the following rates: minivan (26.0%), sport–utility vehicle (22.5%), small car (17.1%), sedan (13.7%), truck (11.9%), van (4.2%), sports car (1.7%), coupe (1.7%), and station wagon (1.4%). Only use of minivans (29%) during 2004–2005 was significantly higher than expected (7%). We discuss several competing hypotheses about why bears selected minivans.

The PDF is very interesting as it shows a percentage of break-ins relative to presence. Minivans are comparably rare but experience a very high rate of break-ins. SUVs are also frequently broken into, but a high percentage of visitors to the park come in SUVs. Station wagons and vans, which could easily replace minivans and SUVs in functionality, have an extremely low risk.

Spoiler alert. The factors suggested are that minivans are messier and smell like food even if there is none present, minivans tend to leave food present, minivans have windows easier for the bears to pop out, and bears have learned to identify the minivan as a more likely source of food.

It reads as much like a study of human behavior by bears as a study of bear behavior by humans.