Stories by: Mary Brandel

A Web application firewall (WAF) is designed to protect Web applications against common attacks such as cross-site scripting and SQL injection. Whereas network firewalls defend the perimeter of the network, WAFs sit between the Web client and Web server, analyzing application-layer traffic for violations in the programmed security policy, says Michael Cobb, founder of Cobweb Applications, a security consultancy.

Video management software (VMS) allows you to record and view live video from multiple surveillance cameras--either IP-based or analog cameras with an encoder--monitor alarms, control cameras and retrieve recordings from an archive. Because they are IP-based, VMS systems are more expandable and flexible than DVR-based systems, and employees can control the software from anywhere on the network. Surveillance and security teams can use the software for live monitoring, as well as investigative and forensic purposes, using archived footage.

Think you can guess the No. 1 threat to the security of your stored data? If you said hackers, or even trouble-making insiders, you'd be wrong. While malicious threats are an ongoing concern, it's your well-meaning employees who are more likely to unknowingly expose your company's stored data through, say, a file-sharing network or a misplaced laptop.

Role mining and discovery: The ability to collect user access and authorization information from a variety of resources, associate this data with candidate roles and responsibilities, propose alternative roles and leverage decisions made about the data on an ongoing basis.

The role management software vendor community is relatively young, and as such, Burton Group says there is no clear market leader. Vendors can be categorized into two segments: general purpose solutions and embedded solutions.

Role management software enables the creation and lifecycle management of enterprise job roles, according to Forrester Research. It does this by discovering and logically grouping application-level, fine-grained authorizations and entitlements into enterprise job roles, which can then be assigned to people by rule-based provisioning or request-approval workflows.

High-tech consumer products and services of all kinds are making their way into the workplace. They include everything from smart phones, voice-over-IP systems and flash memory sticks to virtual online worlds. And as people grow more accustomed to having their own personal technology at their beck and call -- and in fact can't imagine functioning without it -- the line between what they use for work and what they use for recreation is blurring.