The decennial U.S. census is about to begin. The work of the census provides crucial information for government agencies, academic researchers and private businesses, but it also opens the door for cybercriminals seeking to exploit the widespread publicity around the census to conduct malicious attacks. We will inevitably witness social engineering attacks from individuals pretending to be associated with the census asking for Social Security numbers, passwords and other sensitive personally identifiable information.

Organizations need to prepare themselves for these inevitable attacks and ensure that their employees don’t fall for scams that accidentally compromise sensitive information.

A few years ago, I was talking to an organization’s executive about the budget needed for a security initiative. We discussed the idea that organizations must understand that it’s not if they’ll be breached, but when. If a breach is inevitable either way, the executive asked, why should I spend all this money on security?…

Cybersecurity attacks are more organized than ever. The threats to organizations’ applications and data require IT professionals to be more focused than ever, too. The attention that organizations are paying to security was on display in August at the CDW Managing Risk Summit in Boston. The event brought IT leaders from across the U.S. together…

Remember the old days of phishing, where poorly written and designed e-mails linked to obviously fake websites, where you were asked to divulge your Social Security number, your mother’s maiden name, even your passwords. Those were simpler times — so much easier to spot a phishing scam. The warnings were clear and the perpetrators clumsy…

While speaking to a Chicago group about security recently, I picked someone out of the audience and asked him to tell me his password. He looked at me like I was up to no good. “Let me guess,” I said. “Is it at least eight characters with one number and one special character?” He said…

With 1,500 network security reviews under our belts using CDW Threat Check, we’ve learned a few things about how organizations can close up security loopholes.