Business Technology Roundtable

Security breaches or other unexpected interruptions can happen anytime to anyone -- whether you are a large enterprise or a small business. Fully maintaining communication network security is a demanding responsibility -- and typically not the best use of your limited IT resources, that would be better applied to delivering incremental new business technology benefits to your organization. Fortunately, there are alternatives to a do-it-yourself comprehensive security solution. Skilled managed service providers continue to enhance their network security offerings. AT&T announced the availability of Security Event and Threat Analysis and Security Device Management, two new managed security services available for businesses of all sizes. Customized to Your Unique Business Needs The services enable you to engage AT&T security professionals selectively and simply to provide customized security support. Services range from security event analysis and threat management analysis to ...

Managed services provider Verizon Business has added an interesting twist to its security toolbox. Traditionally, managed security services are tactical: they monitor a network for potential attacks, using virus signatures and other definitions. Earlier this month, Verizon upgraded its customers' security capabilities with what it calls its " Risk-Correlation Service ," designed to add strategic insight to security. The RCS works with vulnerability scans -- either those it does for customers or those from vendors such as McAfee, Qualys, and others -- to determine where potential vulnerabilities exist. The service also documents your system to create a map of devices and the business processes that run on them. "It marries threat information with vulnerability information," says Jonathan Nguyen-Duy, Director of Product Management for Verizon. Calculating Risks The result is a Web-based scorecard that shows Verizon customers not only where potential problems exist...

Because of the expanding growth and complexity of communication networking, and the risks presented by a new breed of skillful hackers, serious security threats are an unfortunate certainty within the highly interconnected office environment of today. These threats are very real and the results are costly to those businesses that have been affected. Apparently, the victims aren't entirely at random, which is often assumed to be the case. According to the 2007 CSI Computer Crime and Security Survey , almost one-fifth (18 percent) of those respondents who suffered one or more kinds of security incident further said they had suffered a "targeted attack" -- defined as a malware attack aimed exclusively at their organization or at organizations within a small subset of the general population. Beyond the Virus Threat Moreover, financial fraud overtook virus attacks as the source of the greatest financial losses. Virus losses, which had been the leading cause of loss for seven s...