Wayne Dunn, CTO of HarborOne Bank in New England, says improving vendor management is a top security priority for institutions in 2014. As more core banking functions are outsourced, due diligence becomes increasingly critical.

For risk managers, an often overlooked step for minimizing supply chain risks is to continually monitor outsourcers and other third parties to address critical security issues, says the Information Security Forum's Steve Durbin.

Computer scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology are developing new ways to apply encryption when storing or searching data in the cloud, says Paul Royal, associate director of the university's information security center.

U.S. Attorney Steve Wiggington says identity theft, especially linked to card skimming, is still the No. 1 fraud threat facing financial services institutions as well as consumers. He stresses information sharing is critical for fighting fraud.

Organizations need to know how other enterprises handle cyber-attacks to truly understand whether their IT security investments will pay off, the EastWest Institute's Karl Rauscher says.

Shoring up mobile security gaps should be a top 2014 priority for financial institutions, says Gartner analyst Anton Chuvakin, who contends many other security issues, including managing cloud vendors and other third parties, aren't so urgent.

Every second, 80 "things" are being connected to the Internet, and ISACA's Rob Stroud says that requires information security professionals to identify and mitigate threats, protect individuals' privacy and manage access.

New requirements to mitigate payment card risks posed by third parties, such as cloud providers and payment processors, are a focal point of the PCI Security Standards Council's updated data security standard.

As Michigan deploys its Cyber Civilian Corps, the state will need to address some of the same challenges the federal government faces in sharing cyberthreat information between the government and the private sector, state CIO David Behen says.

The number of reported breaches is up considerably this year, but so is the overall quality of organizations' breach preparedness, says Michael Bruemmer of Experian Data Breach Resolution.