CSO

New Director of IT Risk Management

I would recommend that the Obama administration require all companies receiving bailout dollars to disclose any and all security and risk posture information including audit findings, threat and vulnerability information, incidents, breaches, and other such items.

Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" offers insights into military strategy that are applicable to information security. Two salient concepts discussed in his treatise are invincibility and vulnerability. While the former exists can acted upon, the latter relies on the actions of the opponent.

Biotech company broadens view of operational risk

Excuses for plagiarism don't surprise people anymore. If a high school junior proclaimed, "I did it because my hard drive crashed," most would shrug it off as a young mistake and tell them to not let it happen again. But what about plagiarism from well-known scientists?

Harold Garner, an expert on scientific plagiarism, said, "It's just too easy to cut and paste these days." What's going on here?

Every once in a while we do the lighter side. It is that time again to get a chuckle and get our taxonomy corrected and some images that truly depict our current state of affairs.

The new OMB director starts a blog while news organizations world-wide announce layoffs. What's going on? Is this the new normal?

As the world recession deepens, the traditional role played by reporters continues to change. News organizations around the world are in financial trouble, and there are far fewer reporters. Oftentimes, remaining staff are asked to stay home for weeks without pay. Meanwhile, the number of bloggers continue to grow, as content moves online.

Whether this is a good or bad development depends on your viewpoint. What is not in doubt - this trend is impacting government information flow, security and risk. Here's why.

At one point, we were restricted to our location due to the targeting of US Military and civilian personnel in this area. Airlines were being targeted for hijackings by various Palestinian groups and by Carlos the Jackal. We knew which airlines to avoid since these groups were extorting money from various governments not to be hijacked. The governments paid.

CSO moves up

Please spend more money on securing your most valuable asset - our data - it's bad enough to have to search for a job in this market to have salt thrown in the wound ...