How CIOs Can Solve the Security Puzzle

As though staying on top of changing technology trends wasn’t enough, today's CIOs also find themselves being held responsible for securing the IT department as well as the rest of the company. This is a job that few of us have ever been trained to do; however, the stakes have never been higher. What You'll Find Inside: VULNERABILITY MANAGEMENT: THE CIO’S OTHER JOB KEVIN MITNICK SPEAKS ABOUT IT SECURITY DATA PROTECTION SECRETS: CIOS KNOW THAT IT STARTS AT THE ENDPOINT THE INSIDER THREAT: WHAT CIOS NEED TO KNOW Your company's senior management knows even less about IT security than you do. However, they view you as being the person who can keep them safe. If you can accomplish this task, then you will have secured your relationship with the CEO and CFO, if not then they may be looking for a new CIO. In order to successful secure your department and your company, you are going to have to start at the network's endpoints and work your way in. This will involve creating security policies that everyone can live with and performing routine vulnerability management studies. The key to any successful securing of a corporate network is to make sure that only the right people and applications are allowed to be there. This means that you'll need to implement an effective identify management program. You'll have to do the same thing for the applications that run on the company's network by creating a whitelisting solution that ensures that you are only executing the code that should be run. At times dealing with the wide variety of IT security threats that your company will be facing will seem to be overwhelming. However, by taking the time to listen to what reformed hackers have to tell us, you'll be able to prioritize the threats and focus your time and energy where they'll do the most good. This book has been written in order to provide you with a great starting point for ensuring that you've done everything that you can to protect your company. We'll show you what you need to take care of and how the bad guys are going to try to break into your networks. Follow the suggestions in this book and you'll have successfully secured your company's IT resources. For more information on what it takes to be a great CIO, check out my blog, The Accidental Successful CIO, at: www.TheAccidentalSuccessfulCIO.com