Gabriel Whalen

[sayit]Last fall, I visited with IT leaders from hundreds of organizations at events that CDW held around the country. The concerns of these cybersecurity professionals often included a common focus: confirming their compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and preparing for the rollout of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Regulatory…

It’s no secret that email is one of the most common ways that attackers gain a foothold on an organization’s network. Targeted spear-phishing campaigns use carefully designed messages that combine a sophisticated look and feel with appealing content to trick users into clicking on malicious messages. Awareness campaigns have their place, but the practical reality…

I recently spent time speaking with IT leaders at CDW’s Protect SummIT in Philadelphia and heard a common theme: Organizations across the U.S. are incredibly concerned about the threat posed by social engineering attacks. All too often, leaders I speak with tell me that their organizations had recently fallen victim to phishing attacks that requested…

My work takes me around the country and provides me with the opportunity to visit a wide variety of CDW customers across industries. As I’ve traveled over the past year, IT and cybersecurity leaders throughout the US sometimes tell me, “We’ve already handled the cybersecurity basics and conduct regular vulnerability scans and penetration tests. How…

A few months ago, I received a call from a CDW customer in the Midwest. The customer was in a rush and got right to the point of the call: "We need a penetration test." When I asked for more details about the type of testing required, the reply was simple: "We just need a…

The IT workforce is a critical element of cybersecurity. New solutions come into the market to help organizations protect their data, but without skilled, experienced workers to implement them, these tools alone aren’t going to get the job done. During the CDW Managing Risk Summit in Boston last month, the importance of the cybersecurity workforce…