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The author conveys his thoughts on attending a security conference by computer and network security company RSA Security LLC as a way of interacting with vendors. Topics mentioned include opportunity to get face time with knowledgeable engineers, management of security configurations of critical infrastructure, and security strategy and opinions on what works and what does not work.

The article presents the author's insights about his objection of using third-party tests in performing assessments of the applications and network of a business. Topics discussed include the unintended incident response might be resulted from permitting a third-party assessment, hiring least expensive firms to perform the security assessments, and the nondisclosure agreements (NDA).

The article offers the author's insights regarding the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack domain name system (DNS) services provider Dyn. The author mentions the approach of the company following the attacks which affect its cloud-based software-as-a-service applications such as the use Route 53 DNS service of electronic commerce firm Amazon.

The article discusses the issue of locked up files or documents such as project plans due to a ransomware. The author stated that the backups allow the users to restore the documents before cybercriminals encrypt it. He also suggests that using antivirus solution with the capability of detecting ransomware and cloud-based systems management tools can be helpful.

The article focuses on troubles raised due to network problems on the day of critical cross-site scripting (XSS) attack due to unavailability of world-class security operations center (SOC). Topics discussed include compensation of SOC by building automation into the monitoring of logs and cherry-picking events; indicators of an XSS attacks like network trafficking and attempts to attach computers with other networks.

The article focuses on the security risks of software as a service (SaaS). It mentions the risk facing SaaS as employees working remotely do not need to establish virtual private network (VPN) connections, the CryptoLocker ransomware which encrypts the hard drive files of a victim and demands a ransom for the decryption key, and the risks of malware propagation or unauthorized access to the corporate network arising from personal computers (PCs) not subjected to periodic security scans.

The article reports on the author's discovery over the breach of Information Technology (IT) security with respect to the detection of an accessible Excel spreadsheet with sensitive passwords of the company found in a contractor's home directory. It mention's his discovery where he found a spreadsheet with server names, IP addresses and the administrative user in the company's database. It states his action plans to locate the data files and filtering them according to their priority.

The article offers the author's view on how businesses in the U.S. achieve Level 1 compliance. The author states the need of companies to prove that they are logging their activities and regularly checking their logs. The author notes hiring a third party and offload the collection. The author mentions that compliance is far from guarantee of security.

The article emphasizes the role of money in accomplishing the plans of the author to modernize his company's application program interface (API) architecture and develop a health check application to encourage customers to enhance security controls. He advises his company to offer a bonus pay to his colleagues to persuade them to work on the security initiatives. The initiatives' status is also discussed.

Information about several papers discussed at Black Hat security conference held in Las Vegas, Nevada is presented. Topics discussed include security awareness training, remotely control connected car functions, user training programme for users, keeping track on users who have completed the training and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard system to protect data.

The article emphasizes that detection of security issues may require input from many sources due to the shortcomings of traditional vulnerability management. The author relates one problem with his company's email notification system raised by a customer which scanning tools and manual testing failed to discover. The author says a regular internal and third-party assessment of the company's application program interface (API) was then included as part of the vulnerability management program.

The author reports on the test conducted following the upgrade done to a company's breach response plan. Topics include the National Institute of Standards and Technology's guide for incident handling as the basis of the author's breach response policy, how they eradicated any malware or other foreign activities from the environment, and the tools and methods used to detect a breach.

In this article, the author discusses his concerns presented before executive management about security breaches and measures to prevent the same. Topics discussed include use of Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) by U.S. retail firm Target, violations of corporate remote-access policy by using peer-to-peer software and remote-control software such as LogMeIn by employees, and suggests to restrict the use of and access to risky applications.

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experiences of working as a information technology (IT) security manager in his new company as of January 2015, particularly in identifying security issues in their operation.

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's working experiences, particularly in establishing a solid information technology (IT) security program in his new company as of November 2014.

The article narrates how an information technology (IT) manager implemented the rule of least privilege, which is the practice of granting only the minimum amount of access necessary, to both the users and the resources on the corporate network. Topics discussed include control of command-and-control server, and the research and development (R&D) network. Also mentioned are blocking pornography, malware, phishing sites and spyware sites, as well as incorporating user identity into firewalls.

The author contemplates on the efforts of information technology (IT) professionals to find and fix any vulnerable resources after the discovery of Heartbleed, a security bug in the open-source implementation of Secure Sockets Layer (OpenSSL)cryptography library. Topics covered include the disclosure of up to 64 kilobytes of memory due to the vulnerability, the author's effort of running a vulnerable version of OpenSSL and the reaction of network and security vendors to such vulnerabilities.

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience of working in a company that spent a fortune after outsourcing the development of a module of one of its software products.

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experiences in resolving Internet issues in their company that were caused by virtual machines used by student trainees.

The article highlights the complementary benefit of using existing network data loss prevention (DLP) combined with endpoint DLP technology for better network security. It notes the advantage of using network-based DLP in uncovering data leaking from the company as well as problems including logistics. It details the shortcomings of endpoint DLP, like inability to conduct data index matching, as well as advantages like detecting data movement to external media.

The article discusses the changes in mobile device management (MDM) as the prices have dropped and the market has matured with the latest deployment of network access control (NAC) technology complementing an MDM deployment.

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience as a systems security manager, of determining how their servers were exposed to malware, after learning of the incident from their security information and event monitoring (SIEM) tool.

The article focuses on the importance of updating information technology policies regularly. It says that it is important to modify policies as new standards arise or as part of adjustments to some business reality that was previously unacknowledged. It mentions some policy modifications that can addressed regularly such as passwords, firewalls and policies that relate to cloud-computing. It also mentions the policies on acceptable use which must be attested to by every employee each year.

The article offers the author's insights regarding the management of patchy patch histories and malware protection of 30 Internet-facing servers, where some of the servers are their unmanaged resources. He says that they put the research & development (R&D) resources behind their firewall, emphasizing configuration management of their production network. He adds that some of unmanaged resources were Linux servers consisting of source-code compilers.

In the article, the author discusses the benefits of a data leak prevention (DLP) program in the operation of a company. He cites as example their experiences at their company,in which they plan to extend their DLP program. He explains how DLP works, which is said to depend on both content matching and index matching.

The article presents author's views on the security issues with emails and source code leakage. He discusses several facts which includes importance of strings of characters that identifies the leakage of most sensitive source code, audit of the Office 365 deployment and email access from mobile devices while bypassing Microsoft ActiveSync and the security policy.

The article presents the author's views on his data security priorities for 2014. The author says that he will deploy several security tools and educate users. The author told that his bank has security firewalls that check online traffic, carry out malware inspection, intrusion prevention, URL filtering and access authority check at the application layer.

The article offers information on the data classification, with reference to restriction of data in a company. It states that there are three classifications including restricted, confidential and public. It mentions the creation of matrix for evaluating new applications that weighs methods of access against the need for restriction.

The author discusses the advantages for business companies to offshore their information technology (IT) activities. He cites his experience in working in an IT company in which he realized the significant savings that offshoring has to offer. The author also recognizes the challenges and inconveniences associated with the process, however, he asserts that its benefits outweigh such difficulties.

The article focuses on a decision of the author's company to monitor traffic leaving the office. It states that traffic originated from external internet protocol (IP) addresses, which was suspicious as the company used internal private IP addresses. The author mentions that he called his crisis action team as he thought that it was a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. The author highlights that he decided to work on firewalls after the incident.

The article presents information on security review ahead of acquisition of a firm with reference to author's experience of acquiring a small company. It has been warned that problems can go undiscovered if security isn't properly represented during the initial phase of an acquisition. The author states that one problem that they found in the small company was processing of credit cards.

The article reports on the journal's network access control (NAC) initiative.

The article presents author's views on the necessity of upgradation of the plans of company. He mentions that there is always a requirement of change in incident response plans of the company for security purposes and recommends incident response plans from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He also discusses several representatives needed from information security which includes Windows and Unix engineers, network engineers and help desk personnel.

The article presents author's views on several situations which he is facing in his daily routine including Virtual Private Network (VPN) configuration, web-based corporate emails and permissions. It discusses the importance of VPN as it is the connection between the security, desktop and network teams and the use of browser-based Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA).

In this article, the author mentions a meeting with his company's research and development (R&d) tool to create a software security laboratory. The author mentions that the company's R&D team has been selected to enhance the security of software's and products. Issues regarding the infrastructural requirements and products are also mentioned.

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience of receiving spams from inboxes after migrating to another email systems when the email team failed to enable policy framework.

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience of using a data loss prevention (DLP) tool which uncovered an instant messaging chat between an employee and an outside to conspire an assault of a third man suspected to have an affair of the employee's wife.

A first person narrative is presented which explores the author's experience on protecting sensitive data of a company.

The article focuses on the problem of "shadow information technology (IT)" that is faced by chief information officers (CIOs) of companies. It describes shadow IT, also called rogue IT, as any form of IT that has entered into the company without proper approval, and discusses the risks associated with rogue IT. It also mentions the benefits of the software as a service (SaaS) model to tackle the problem of shadow IT.

The article presents information on information security with reference to an email distribution list that was spammed. Following from several employees about problems in acessing company's payroll website and it was dentified a piece of malicious software for connecting to a website in China. The phishing email was reported to be sent to an externally available distribution list that has more than 900 users.

In this article, the author analyzes the security system of Gartner Group Inc. It states that security system has been analyzed by using various methods including data leak prevention technology, network access control (NAC) deployment and use of firewalls. The author concluded that security system of Gartner is really weak and they have to improve it.

The article presents the author's views on the responsibility of security managers to prevent potential vulnerability of software and related products. He says that he works as a security manager and focuses on things like corporate network, protection of intellectual property and Web applications. However, he says that a security manager should also focus on the security of the products, made by the firm. He talks about fixing a software which was not sufficiently encrypting passwords.

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience of hiring a hacker.

The article discusses the problems related to data leak prevention (DLP) technology. The author deployed DLP to protect his company's intellectual property. However, the author says that this demonstration started to fail, and he was unable to see any of the Microsoft Exchange e-mail traffic. The author discussed this issue with his firewall engineer, and he said that Palo Alto Network Inc.'s (PAN) firewalls could decrypt SSL traffic.

The article focuses on the concept of data leak prevention (DLP) in an organization in the U.S. It offers information on the Salesforce.com that has the repository of information related to customers, sales opportunities and sales forecasts. It offers information on the DLP tool installed by the company to detect customer account number.

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience of resolving an information technology (IT) query.

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience of investigating a suspected child pornographer in his firm.

The article presents a case study on cloud infrastructure and server provisioning in a company. It states that the cloud would be key to that data center shrinkage. The first server, a public cloud provider such as Amazon EC2, would have no relationship with internal network. The second is a hybrid cloud in which they host infrastructure at a third-party data center and build a VPN tunnel. The third is a private cloud, where they would host a virtual environment on their own network.

The article discusses the brainstorming carried out to solve the security breach related to an executive's email. The author had his security analyst search the company's security incident and event management (SIEM) tool for any malware on the executive's personal computer (PC). It was found out that the executive's email was configured to give access to any employee in the company.

The article offers information on the My Mecca conference by RSA held in San Francisco, California on February 2012. As stated, the conference offered a chance to compare notes with other security professionals. It states that several issues including security-awareness training, cloud computing, and mobility were discussed at the conference.