Stories by George V. Hulme

The CSO's failure to lead

Talk to any information security professional over the past decade about a number of their greatest perceived challenges when it comes to doing their job. More often than not you'll hear about how their organization's business leadership didn't provide them the support and space they need to secure their organizations properly. One way you'll hear this is when it comes to the lack of budget. Another way you'll often hear this expressed, is as security "doesn't get a seat at the table."

George V. Hulme | 10 Jun | Read more

The U.S. state of cybercrime takes another step back

When it comes to cybercrime, it seems no enterprise goes unscathed. There are more breaches happening, the associated costs are rising, and business leadership grows increasingly concerned that information security remains a challenge that is out of control. Those are the headline findings of the 2014 U.S. State of Cybercrime Survey, an annual survey by CSO Magazine with help from the U.S. Secret Service, the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, and PwC.

George V. Hulme | 30 May | Read more

CISOs taking a leap of faith

If we're lucky, We'll all have a chance once in our careers to take a risk and use our skills and experience to do something we truly love. Sometimes the career risk is low, but sometimes it's truly a leap of faith--one that offers potentially big rewards as well as the risk of major setbacks.

George V. Hulme | 29 May | Read more

How to optimize your security budget

The good news is that security budgets are rising broadly. The bad news? So are successful attacks. Perhaps that's why security budgets averaging $4.3 million this year represent a gain of 51% over the previous year – and that figure is nearly double the $2.2 million spent in 2010 – all according to our most recent Global Information Security Survey, conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

George V. Hulme | 13 May | Read more

Agile doesn't (necessarily) mean fragile

To be as competitive as possible more organizations today are creating more agile development and operations teams who are collaborating more closely together than before -- and moving more applications and more application updates than ever before as a result. Some are moving many dozens of updates and infrastructure changes a day.

George V. Hulme | 26 Apr | Read more

Pulling the reins on data breach costs

For years enterprises have battled to prevent and manage data breaches, yet the costs associated with data breaches keep climbing higher -- especially for organizations in highly regulated industries. The average cost of a breach today is $188 per record in the U.S, According to the Ponemon Institute, with the total costs of data breach hitting upwards of $5.4 million. Also according to Ponemon average losses are up 18% from the same survey in the prior year.

George V. Hulme | 19 Feb | Read more

iOS vs. Android: Which is more secure?

With millions of new iOS and Android devices pouring into the enterprise every quarter, it's important to know just how much risk these devices bring - and if one mobile operating system has an edge over another when it comes to securing enterprise applications and data.

George V. Hulme | 29 Jan | Read more

The 7 best habits of effective security pros

Today's information security professionals need to learn more swiftly, communicate more effectively, know more about the business, and match the capabilities of an ever-improving set of adversaries. But, it doesn't seem too long ago that all it took to survive in the field was a dose of strong technical acumen and a shot of creativity to protect the network, solve most problems, and fend off attacks.

George V. Hulme | 08 Jan | Read more

State of the CSO in 2013 shows an improved outlook

On paper, in many ways, the state of the CSO appears to be improving. Budgets in many enterprises appear to be headed in the right direction: up. So is staffing. CSOs are also getting to do what they've wanted to do for a decade and are spending more time with the top executives in their organizations.

George V. Hulme | 16 Dec | Read more

Detect and respond: How organizations are fighting off targeted attacks faster

It doesn't matter how high, deep, or long the IT walls are that security pros build around their networks, it seems attackers find ways to fly over, dig under, or drill through. The most recent Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that more than 50 percent of all breaches were caused by some form of hacking -- and it took months to years for more than two thirds of successful breaches to be detected.

George V. Hulme | 20 Nov | Read more

Beyond breach prevention: The need for adequate response

If there's been any lesson learned in the past decade, it's that despite tens of billions having been spent on anti-malware, firewalls, intrusion-detection and prevention systems, and other defensive technologies -- it's just not realistic for enterprise security teams to expect to be able to stop every attack.

George V. Hulme | 04 Nov | Read more

Thinking outside the IT audit (check)box

After years of security teams reaching into the regulatory compliance budget bucket to find the funding they need for their security efforts, some organizations are noticing that while it won short-term capital, the practice has come back to haunt them in the long run. And while it does sound cliche to hear that compliance does not equal security, many enterprises are taking steps to make sure their focus is on building resilient IT and not merely on passing an audit.

George V. Hulme | 21 Oct | Read more