Information security and privacy work in healthcare environments often requires a depth of specialized knowledge and competency that can be validated through the help of professional credentialing, says CISO Sean Murphy.

Retail point-of-sale breaches at Target Corp. and Neiman Marcus have put a spotlight on payment card security and encryption. But achieving true end-to-end encryption isn't easy, says data protection specialist Richard Moulds.

Banking Trojans such as Zeus have gotten much tougher to detect because of new attack techniques, which means intrusions are going undiscovered for longer periods, says Trusteer researcher Etay Maor.

Mobility has driven the rise of containerization as a security strategy for employee-owned devices. But what about for contractors? Kimber Spradlin of Moka5 discusses how to mitigate third-party risks.

Attackers likely purchased malware in underground "cybercrime-as-a-service" markets to use in recent credit card breaches, including the Target Corp. attack, a new report from McAfee Labs asserts. Adam Wosotowsky explains the report's findings.

One key factor in efforts to reduce reliance on passwords for authentication will be international acceptance of the FIDO Alliance's soon-to-be released protocol for advanced authentication, says Michael Barrett, the alliance's president.

Recent data breaches, such as the ones suffered by Target Corp. and Neiman Marcus, may have been detected sooner if retailers had been sharing transactional pattern and behavioral information about their customers, says Mike Braatz of ACI Worldwide.

Distributed-denial-of-service attacks are a concern for all organizations. But financial institutions face unique challenges, and so they require a unique level of protection, says Mark Byers of Fortinet.

Phyllis Schneck, the Department of Homeland Security's deputy undersecretary for cybersecurity, equates the department's continuous diagnostics and mitigation initiative with a medical probe detecting an infection in the human body.

By automating data analysis, organizations can enhance their threat intelligence and lessen their workloads, says Flint Brenton, president and CEO of AccelOps.