During the 2007 housing crisis, Columbus, Ohio--like most municipalities--faced significant tax shortfalls and revenue constraints.

Sure, things are tough for security pros right now, note keynote speakers. But all is not lost in the war against cybercrime

Mark Weatherford, deputy undersecretary for cybersecurity at DHS, wants to set up a cyber 9-1-1 system for critical infrastructure. He outlined his vision today at the Cloud Security Alliance Summit, held as part of the RSA Conference.

Effective identity management is essential to security, regulatory compliance and in some cases even business success. So why is it still so hard for many companies?

The younger IT workforce is bringing major change to organizations -- whether those organizations like it or not.

Anyone you care to ask will likely--and reasonably--agree that the threats against IT systems and data are serious and organizations need to take appropriate steps to protect their infrastructure and information. But if you look at the practices actually in use at many organizations, it becomes painfully apparent that there's still a wide gulf between ideals and reality.

Executives know they face risks, but they often don't know which risks are real, or what that exposure means to their business.

IT security and risk professionals who attended the 7th Annual Secure360 Conference earlier this week at the St. Paul River Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota certainly heard a startling earful as the show kicked-off: If they're not managing risk right in their organization, they may, in fact, be the biggest risk their organization faces.

Enterprise security pros have plenty to worry about: malware, insiders stealing information, an employee leaving an unencrypted notebook full of gigabytes of intellectual property on a train. However, the spate of hacktivist attacks in recent years from groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec has upped the anxiety level. According to a number of recent surveys, Most IT and security professionals see Anonymous as a serious threat to their companies.

Robert Capps knows a lot about fraud and transaction-level risk. As senior manager of trust and safety at StubHub, Capps has witnessed just about every trick that can be thrown at a fraudulent transaction. In case you're not aware, since 2000, StubHub has provided a marketplace for event-goers to buy and sell tickets to sporting games, concerts and theater shows.

One of the biggest challenges in security today is how the software in our operating systems and applications are so full of holes. And while traditional software makers have made (some) headway in developing more resilient applications, experts say embedded device and systems makers -- from those who create implanted medical devices to industrial control systems -- are eons behind in secure system design and development maturity.

There's plenty of talk about enterprises building hybrid clouds that contain the appropriate mix of public cloud and private resources. But there's not a lot of choices available to securely move or manage workloads across such disparate environments.

The good news for enterprises: Mobile devices are packed with power. A new iPhone is 100 times lighter, 100 times faster, and 10 times less expensive than the luggable notebooks of the early 1980s.

Everything works well in the Cloud, until it doesn't.

Last week a dark spot on the Sun, nearly the size of Jupiter, let go with a massive solar eruption. For a number of days thereafter, scientists around the world waited to see if the discharged solar plasma and charged particles would interfere with communication systems, satellites, computer circuits and even the electrical grid.