Please join us in welcoming a two more RSA Bloggers. The RSA Compliance Solutions team (which already includes Dave Howell and Brad Davenport) has been joined by Andrew Maloney and John McDonald.

Please take advantage of the comments field to get answers to your compliance-related security queries!

As an RSA 'Evangelist' with pan-EMEA responsibilities, I obviously take a special interest in what's happening in the information security world that pertains to this region. Last week saw the publication in the UK of the long-awaited Hannigan Report -- detailing the steps that UK Government departments have taken -- and are expected to take -- to mitigate recent data leakage events which have occurred, most notably in the instance of HMRC.

It's a cracking read and one I'd recommend to all insomniacs with an penchant for such topics, but I have to say, I'm actually pretty encouraged by what I read...

I talk to a lot of security folks about SIEM and log management, and quite often the conversation turns to event correlation. You can spot the people who've never bought a SIEM product, because they start by saying, "Well, I want to know whenever 'x' happens, and then 'y' happens soon after". Admittedly, the situation they cite is a usually real one, and granted, if you do see 'x' and 'y' happening in reasonably quick succession then, chances are, you have a problem. But it's usually not their biggest problem -- in fact, far from it. My favorite is "the guy swiping his badge in Tokyo and then logging on in New York", which I hear time and time again...

Many of the merchants I speak with are sharply focused on addressing specific PCI security requirements. While implementing the controls needed to meet the requirements is absolutely critical, I can't stress enough the importance of taking time to aim before firing.

It's no secret that PCI compliance is focused on securing cardholder data and infrastructure. Simply put, you can't secure what you don't manage and you can't manage what you don't know about. Before you go looking for all instances of cardholder data, you must be prepared to find more than expected.

Most merchants are aware of the cardholder data in their database(s). But what about payment applications or payment portals that temporarily store the data? Or customer service reps e-mailing credit card information to confirm or dispute an order?...

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The fear of data leakage through loss, theft or careless use of USB flash drives is rising dramatically throughout the enterprise. This week we discuss the problem and potential solutions with Dror Todress, Senior Manager, Marketing, for SanDisk Corporation’s Enterprise Division.

So earlier this year, again in my past life as an analyst, I spoke to a bunch of users, vendors and experts hoping to get some best practices about creating a Security Operations Center (SOC). For Forrester customers, I published my findings here.

To be honest, I originally came at this piece of research as a way to define what the place of a SIEM product in a SOC, so I diligently asked everyone I interviewed what technologies they thought were central to a security operations function. The answers I got were pretty unexpected, and normally started with the phrase "Technology? Oh that's an afterthought."

When we think of a SOC, we often have this picture of a big room, full of people in rows staring at a big screen up front, with monitors in front of them...

As part of the RSA Compliance Solutions team I meet with companies all over the world to discuss their security challenges and priorities. Inevitably I spend much of my time discussing ... you guessed it ... compliance.

It is eye-opening to see how differently our customers and partners, as well as folks within RSA, define compliance. From what I've seen, most will immediately gravitate towards the notion of meeting the stated or implied security requirements within governmental mandates, such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA. In addition, "compliance" certainly conjures up images of the PCI Data Security Standard, which isn't surprising considering how many organizations these requirements impact. What we don't tend to see initially is a broader view of compliance...

Please join us in welcoming a new set of RSA Bloggers. The RSA Compliance Solutions team--including Dave Howell and Brad Davenport--will be penning a set of blog entries for "Speaking of Security" around the theme of Simplified Compliance. Please take advantage of the comments field to get answers to your compliance-related security queries!