Editor's Note
Security : A bugging concern of Indian enterprises
Hackers, viruses and worms, spyware and malware, all in their different forms and disguises, pose serious threat to enterprises, governments and even individual users of computers. The security threat to organizations running on networks–public or private, or both--is even greater with grave consequences.
Viruses can wipe out data from the storage devices, hackers can crack into your network and steal passwords and databases crucial to your businesses and, spyware can sit on your system and transmit vital information such as the source code of a critical project to your competitor sitting in a remote corner before his computer.
Internet has made the transmission of viruses, worms and spyware a lot easier and the infection can spread rapidly to millions of computers. While open and collaborative working environments have helped enterprises to scale up their operations and improve upon their productivity, they have also made enterprise networks more vulnerable to attacks from hackers and crackers. What is more menacing is the fact that the next-generation web-based threats are designed to invisibly capture both personal and company confidential information.
With employees, and in many a cases customers, able to log into the networks of enterprises, which have adopted open and collaborative environments, the task of providing a fool-proof security shield becomes all the more difficult for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs). Individual access devices, be it a PC or a PDA, hooked on to the network from remote locations, provide open gateways to hack as they are the single weakest link in such environments. The problem, while being tackled by stopping viruses and spam at the gateway, continues to be a threat for the proliferation of use of devices into the company's networks.
How prepared are the Indian enterprises to meet the present and future security threats to their IT infrastructure and environments? What is the rate of adoption of International security Standards like ISO/IEC 27001 amongst the enterprises in India? What are the key security concerns of a CSO? We cover this along with latest news on security; security product reviews as well as interviews and viewpoints of top CIOs across various verticals in CIOL's special on enterprise security.
Nachiketa Desai
Associalte Editor
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