When Richard Nealon first sat for his CISSP exam, he was struck by how U.S.-centric the questions were. Since then, he has strived to promote greater awareness of global information security concerns.

NIST's Donna Dodson is leading a federal government effort to take hundreds of suggestions from the private sector to create an IT security best practices framework that critical infrastructure operators could voluntarily adopt.

Although there have not yet been any confirmed reports of financial fraud associated with a major data breach at the Utah Department of Health last year, the potential for costly fraud is huge, contends Al Pascual of Javelin Strategy and Research.

It isn't just the quantity of cyber-attacks that's staggering; it's the quality. The average hacker now has access to nation-state-level attack capabilities, says James Lyne of Sophos. How can organizations defend?

It isn't a staffing shortage that we face, but rather a skills crisis, says Allan Boardman, international vice president of ISACA. How can organizations build the security skills they need to mitigate evolving risks?

Organizations face new cyber-risks from their third-party service providers. But standard contracts fail to cover these risks. Trend Micro's Tom Kellermann discusses the risk management essentials.

As data protection regulations continue to be refined, organizations throughout Europe are more sensitive to privacy restrictions in individual countries, says Dwayne Melancon, CTO of Tripwire.

Distributed-denial-of-service attacks are increasing against European banking institutions. But UK consultant Mark Child says if banks are worried about DDoS, then they have bigger security problems.

Distributed-denial-of-service attacks jumped significantly in 2012. And it's not just banking institutions that are victims, Verizon finds in its just-released Data Breach Investigations Report.