State-sponsored attacks are up significantly, so organizations need to rely on new, stronger controls to ward off advanced threats. John Gordineer of Dell SonicWALL discusses the role of next-generation firewalls.

Who are the threat actors, what are their techniques and when are they apt to attack? This is the type of threat intelligence all organizations need, says Scott Kaine of Cyveillance.

Misconfigured firewalls aren't necessarily a result of technical issues. Often, there are business or staff issues that can be easily addressed to improve security. Jerry Skurla of FireMon explains how.

Former federal banking examiner Amy McHugh says banks can learn a lot from recent legal decisions and settlements in account takeover cases, including which authentication and online-banking security investments they should make.

Globally, across industries, DDoS attacks are getting larger, says Susan Warner of Neustar. But are the attacks aimed more at disrupting organizations, or distracting them, so fraud can be committed?

In the face of advanced threats, organizations need to shift their security posture from breach prevention to incident response, says Tom Cross of Lancope, who discusses new strategies.

Mobile device management and application security are just two aspects to consider. What about network security? Dave Jevans of Marble Security discusses a three-tiered approach to mobile security.

The information security industry needs to hit rock bottom, says Akamai's Joshua Corman. And then - to truly improve information risk management - it needs to develop a new, adversarial view of the world.

Conventional DDoS attacks are a nuisance, but the rise of application-layer attacks is a real concern, says Vann Abernethy of NSFOCUS. What are the risks, and how can organizations mitigate them?

The techniques employed by advanced threats aren't particularly sophisticated. It's the intellect and infrastructure behind them that create greater risks, says David Scholtz, CEO of Damballa.