What a stark paradox: Just when information security risks are hitting critical levels, some of the profession's best and brightest CISOs are being pushed to the sidelines.
Consider these events reported this past March and April:
- Hackers stole thousands of customer credit card numbers from BJ's Wholesale Club.
- Online "phishing" scams separately targeted Wells Fargo and the IRS.
- GMAC Insurance alerted 200,000 customers to credit data stolen in January.
- The University of Kansas, the University of Texas, Georgia Tech and Stanford University suffered major information security breaches.
- Microsoft published security bulletin MS04-011 (which addressed the vulnerability that the Sasser worm exploited a month later).
Now contrast those news items with what was happening in Atlanta, for example, during that same time period: