Some of us are numbers people.  We like nothing more than digging into a big batch of numbers.  I confess I’m the other type of person. I still fumble around a spreadsheet and can’t add without the aid of a calculator. For numbers people the ISTR is a terrific document. This year’s report is 160 pages of numbers that do a pretty good job of describing the threat landscape. If you’re a numbers person, feel free to dig in to the full report. You can also check out highlights in this graphic.

If you’re like me, and not really a numbers person, then read on. I’ve bullied my way through the numbers so you don’t have to. Let me give you the highlights, some of the interesting...

fren·e·my [fren-uh-mee] noun. Someone who is both friend and enemy, a relationship that is both mutually beneficial or dependent while being competitive, fraught with risk.

When it comes to taking your intellectual property (IP), employees are the less obvious player but they can be frenemy #1. In many cases, these trusted employees are moving, sharing and exposing sensitive data in order to do their daily jobs. In other instances, they are deliberately taking confidential information to use at their next employer. It’s not that these employees are inherently malicious – often they just don’t know it is wrong to do so.

According to a new Symantec survey...

Businesses are adopting new technology at an unprecedented pace, and the cloud is one area where we’re making the most progress. And by now it’s clear that the cloud provides significant advantages to businesses, improving agility and reducing costs. But there is a darker side as well that organizations may overlook – hidden costs of cloud implementation that can negate the benefits if not properly contained.

The 2013 Symantec Avoiding the Hidden Costs of Cloud Survey reveals some of these unanticipated challenges businesses face as they look to take advantage of today’s efficient cloud solutions. The businesses surveyed showed that, compared to a year ago, cloud adoption is seeing significant progress. In fact, 90 percent of them are now at least discussing the cloud, an increase from 75 percent a year before. But at the same, cloud computing presents its own set of challenges, and industry experts anticipate that security issues and outages will...

By Brian Burch, Vice President of Americas Marketing for SMB at Symantec

Most people agree that small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are a significant source of the innovation that fuels growth, but a lesser recognized fact is the critical role of start-ups in economic recovery. A new report from the Kauffman Foundation indicates that the pace of recovery in hiring and job creation since 2008 is stronger in newer firms – 4 out of every 10 hires at young firms are for newly created jobs.

Supporting small businesses, established and new, in their development and growth is germane to the economy. A major part of small businesses’ success now and in the future will increasingly derive from their business relationships with large corporations. More large...