OVERVIEW

Through the years, so much has been said about the capabilities of technology—that it can keep us all connected and still ensure our information assets are secure and accurate. Yet, time and time again, we’ve seen our infrastructures breached by malware, our corporate data stolen and corrupted, and even our national secrets released and distributed all over the world—as was illustrated so brilliantly by Wikileaks Cablegate (late 2010).

The incident highlighted the importance of having to cover both the policy and technology areas in order to keep our information assets secure. It also served as a reminder to us all that the biggest threats come from the inside.

Add to that the perpetual threats posed from the outside by increasingly sophisticated, aggressive and virulent malware, organised cybercriminals, hacktivists and other black hat types. And add to that the fact that many CEOs and other business leaders continue to cut spending on business essentials such as security–even as they give themselves big fat bonuses and ludicrously high pay raises–during a down economy.

The following are some telling details from the 2011 edition of Computerworld , CSO Magazine and business consulting house PricewaterhouseCoopers’s Global State of Information Security report, which is an annual report that comes out of interviews and surveys of more than 12,800 CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, CISOs, CSOs and other executives responsible for their organisations’ IT and security investments in more than 135 countries.

- Executives across industries and markets worldwide have been reluctant to release funding to support the information security function.
- However, they are more optimistic about their expected security spend for 2011 than at any time since before 2005.
- The drivers for their security spend in 2010–economic conditions, business continuity and disaster recovery, company reputation, internal policy compliance, and regulatory compliance–were not new, but were certainly trending at or near four-year lows.
- For the second year in a row, increasing the focus on data protection is the single most common strategy worldwide.
- This year, there is a significant shift in the ongoing evolution of the Chief Information Security Officer’s reporting channel away from the CIO in favour of the company’s senior business decision-makers.

What is the evidence of these trends? What are the implications for spending over the next six to twelve months? Where are the greatest security-related vulnerabilities emerging? And which are the most crucial opportunities and priorities your organisation should focus on now and over the next year to increase the contribution that security makes to your business? And most importantly, perhaps, how closely should we look at the physical aspects of security and its impact on our digital assets?

At this event, we would like you to join us determine where we are now in these areas—in which are we weak and which strong, what we should be doing to strengthen our infrastructures and our corporate environments, and how far technology can take us in the protection of our digital assets. Expect not just market reports and analyses, but also an explication of best practices and strategies that work.