Special Report: Global Information Security The Global State of Information Security 2005

CIO ^ | October 2005 | Scott Berinato with Research Editor Lorraine Cosgrove Ware

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A worldwide study by CIO and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) reveals a digital landscape ablaze, with thousands of security leaders fighting the flames. But amid the uncertainty and crisis management, there’s an oasis of strategic thinking.

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"At the same time, the data shows a notable lack of focus on actions and strategies that could prevent these incidents in the first place. There’s also a remarkable ambivalence among respondents about compliance with government regulations, a clear lack of risk management discipline, and a continuing inability to create actionable security intelligence out of mountains of security data.

Just 37 percent of respondents reported that they had an information security strategy—and only 24 percent of the rest say that creating one is in the plans for next year. With increasingly serious, complex, targeted and damaging threats continuously emerging, that’s not a good thing. "

You'd think that after the high profile data thefts in the last year, corporate interest in data security would have become a top priority. One possible reason could be that little or no media coverage of the aftermath of the major data losses has appeared. Neither has there been much in the way of reports of the investigative progress of these cases.