Data Security: Features

The ability of malware writers to consistently stay ahead of those seeking to stop them has been a constant factor in the security industry over the past several years.

The inside of the Symantec Security Operations Center looks like a scene out of the movie "War Games," and in many ways, the connection is fitting. The SOC, as it is known by Symantec employees, is in the business of detecting and analyzing network threats. And as malicious activity online gets increasingly more sophisticated, the war against cybercrime is definitely on.

The annual report from Georgia Tech Information Security Center identifies five evolving cyber security threats, and the news is not good.

According to a report from Fox News, several servers at the World Bank Group, an organization that offers economic assistance to developing countries around the globe, were repeatedly compromised and breached over the course of the last year.

While Willy Sutton never really said it, the truth is that people rob banks because that is where the money is. Today's criminals don't walk into banks with loaded guns and get-away drivers. Rather they connect from a remote location using a browser and are armed with hacking tools and spyware.

Protecting a corporate data center is like trying to keep an elephant safe from a swarm of flies. Despite your best efforts, bites happen. As the staples of security -- such as firewalls, antivirus software, spam and spyware filters -- come together in suites of products that allow for sophisticated management, there are other security tools either emerging or worth a rethink.

Shira Rubinoff was a practicing psychologist in 2004. When it came to technology, her experience was simply as a tech user, certainly not a tech guru. Then one day she was phished.

US military strategists, CIA analysts, international agency officials and Nobel Prize winning economists concur with the consensus of the world's scientific community: the Climate Crisis is a planetary security issue, as well as a national security issue for each of the one hundred ninety two countries that belong to the United Nations. But the Climate Crisis is also, by extension, a corporate security issue, as well as, yes, a cyber security issue.

I have conducted more security program assessments than I can remember over the past 15 years. Quite some time ago I conducted some of the first certification and accreditation efforts ever at the CIA. Those were interesting times. We had very little to go on and we tried to assess security controls to the few regulations and controls that existed at that time. By the time I left the federal space and started working almost exclusively in the commercial sector a number of security best practice standards had sprung up. Most recently, in the past 10 years or so, a slew of legislation pertaining to data security and privacy has given us more requirements with which to adhere.

The pace of mobilization within many enterprises is increasing rapidly. Enterprises of all sizes and types are finding that going mobile can significantly increase the productivity of their employees, bringing added flexibility and cost reductions and helping many companies gain a competitive edge in their market.

Business travelers will soon need to carry the name of their corporate lawyer in addition to their passport when traveling to the United States, and they may need to bring with them a different business laptop as well. This is because US Customs can search and confiscate your laptop without any prior cause, according to policies that have been posted online since a Ninth US Circuit Court ruling in April.