What to do: Be curious, ask questions about how risk is measured, educate yourself and your teams, and reflect back to your stakeholders on how IT components figure into the risk equation.

For many CIOs and IT managers, the benefits of moving to the cloud—increased efficiency, reduced cost, excellent scalability, pay-as-you-go pricing, the latest technology without the capital expense—are offset by concerns about security and service quality.

Prime Factors spoke with some of the best minds in data security to get their take on what kinds of data encryption management problems customers run into. They identified several common threats to key management and secure data access which they see over and over again, That advice is condensed and organized here for professionals responsible for effectively protecting sensitive data in their enterprises.

In the payment market, chip card providers are optimizing the hardware offer alongside with software to minimize production costs. The choice of an OS to run EMV cards is one of the most important for financial institutions, as it directly impacts the overall personalization and issuance costs.

PINs (Personal Identification Numbers) are those ubiquitous numbers we all know. They are used to authenticate cardholders, protecting personal accounts and issuers from fraudulent activities. The technology used in the creation, use, and management of PINs can be overwhelming and confusing.

A top five, global, Internet retailer faced several challenges as it sought to comply with PCI DSS requirements, enhance its data security beyond the level typically achieved by complying with those requirements, and create a next generation, flexible and scalable security platform to support company growth. The retailer also needed to ensure the business continuity of its existing systems to maintain uninterrupted sales and cash flow.

Practices for IT development and quality assurance have foundations that extend much further back than the original invention of information technology.

The objective of this document is to provide guidance to Covered Entities, Business Associates, and subcontractors (as defined by HIPAA), and to assist in identifying the best overall approach to becoming compliant and secure in the healthcare industry.

Risk analysis.....risk assessment.....compliance assessment. Are these concepts as confusing to you as they are for most IT professionals?

Voltage Secure Stateless Tokenization represents a paradigm shift in tokenization. It provides service at a higher performance and with greater security than conventional, database-centric solutions. It is Coalfire's opinion that Voltage Secure Stateless Tokenization, when properly implemented, would effectively promote PCI compliance goals and reduce PCI audit scope for merchants and processors alike.

Many of the objections IT leaders have to the cloud today have sprung from myths that have reached urban-legend status. Simply put, cloud backup isn't as fraught with peril as some observers believe it to be. Moreover, while bad news, accurate or otherwise, travels fast, good news about cloud backup and recovery has been slower to reach many IT departments.

Organizations with well-architected, thoroughly tested, and fully documented disaster recovery (DR) plans and solutions were able to bounce back quickly when Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc onshore. Those who were less prepared had their operations knocked completely offline. Are you ready for a disastrous event like Sandy?

During our research, EVault seemed to be the cleanest, and it has now proven to be exactly the solution we need.