In recent years there has been no shortage of news on highly sophisticated threats that are evading detection for long periods, causing serious damage to organizations and stealing valuable information. These are often directed at defense or other government targets, but we still feel the paranoia that we could be the next victim. While we worry about these highly targeted threats, looking for new solutions to protect us from these attacks, are we ignoring simple and effective steps to get the most out of our existing solutions? Are we neglecting our patches and updates, so worried about high-profile threats that simple, common threats easily enter our network?

Whatever new threats are developed, it will never be advisable to neglect the most basic security policies and practices. While we need to be aware of the evolution of security trends, it’s the little things that can still kill us. This point is further explored in my recent guest post in Forbes,...

Few people would disagree with the statement that our world is becoming more complex, and this is especially apparent in the data center. With new technology being rapidly adopted, from mobile devices to cloud computing, businesses are struggling to integrate new solutions that promise increased productivity and cost-savings, while managing ever-growing amounts of information. In order to assess how well organizations are dealing with these changes, we developed the 2012 State of the Data Center Survey.

This is the fifth year that Symantec has run the survey.  To highlight how far IT organizations have come in such a short period of time we only need to look back to the complexities and initiatives to simplify....

The Norton Cybercrime Report is out for 2012! Cybercrime continues to have far-reaching effects- and increasingly a problem on mobile devices and in our social networks (where we seem to be less vigilant).

After surveying more than 13,000 consumers in 24 countries, the researchers found that the numbers of online adults increased by 20 percent from last year, and that cybercrime impacted just under ½ of them in the previous 12 months. The total direct consumer cost was calculated to be $110 billion, slightly down from last year’s $114 billion (USD), with the average cost per victim down approximately 20 percent. The reason the overall cost remains so high is that the pool of victimized online adults grew more rapidly - in other words, less money, but from more victims.

The nature of the crimes is shifting towards the social networks we love and the mobile devices we use constantly. Consumers seem to...

Today’s small and medium-sized businesses are in a unique position. They can now do business globally thanks to online sales, and they can adopt new technologies once reserved for large enterprises due to cost and simplicity. Virtualization in particular is opening up new opportunities for SMBs. But while virtualization is being adopted by an increasing number of businesses, some SMBs may still be unfamiliar with just how virtualization works, and the advantages and challenges it poses.

At its simplest level, virtualization simply creates a pool of shared resources, allowing them to be used more efficiently. Virtualization is most commonly applied to servers, which allows for environments with incompatible requirements to be run on the same server, isolated from each other....