Red Tape

Contributed by Dietrich Lehr

Information has always been a vital part of any business. Today, information is shared globally in an instant and able to be accessed remotely. This has brought about the need for a method of ensuring that this information can be protected securely and unauthorized access and data loss is mitigated. There are several organizations in existence today that have sought to create a set of universal standards that can be tailored and applied to a company, regardless of size, in pursuit of information security. This paper will examine the International Organization for Standardization 27001 standard that exist today to assist companies in creating their own information security management systems. I will also examine digital commercial solutions that are designed to accelerate and automate the implementation of information security management systems used to secure information assets in the workplace.

Contributed by Reverend Jerry L Cason Jr.

The fourth amendment to the constitution promised the right to privacy for every American citizen. Protections were put in place to help ensure these rights wouldn’t be violated. For instance, the United States government needs probable cause and a warrant to search things like our homes and person. When it comes to the Internet and technology, these types of protections don’t seem to exist. For years the government has been fighting hard to strip the privacy of American citizens online. The legality of these programs has appeared to be of no concern to the government which has been caught time and again attempting to hide these tactics from the American populace.

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Contributed by Isaac McGuire

As a network administrator or information security specialist, you might find yourself wondering if your network is safe. You are constantly asking yourself, “What can I do to ensure that the data on my network is protected?” One of the ways to protect your network is what I would like to talk about and that method is through access control systems. In this paper, I am going to cover what access control is. I am also going to talk about the two different types of access control, physical and logical, and some of the methods of both. Next, and the main point, I would like to talk about the security best practices for implementing access control systems. Access control systems are powerful security tools that can help you protect the data on your network.

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Contributed by Michael Mozingo

Millions of credit and debit card transactions are completed daily. Credit and debit card usage is steadily increasing, and with it, so is the treat of fraud. With the increase of payment card fraud, it is important for the merchants who accept these types of payments to have a common standard in place to provide security in keeping card holder information safe. This is where the Payment Card Industry, Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) come into play.

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Contributed by Lamaris Davis

The responsibility of risk management in healthcare systems falls on multiple individuals within any given organization. It’s well known that most hospitals and healthcare systems do not have a completely practicable risk management system that spans across an entire organization and operational structure for the delivery of key services. Ensuring the security of protected health information (PHI) in your health IT system requires that you institute measures to guard against unauthorized use or disclosure of PHI. A risk management plan should have five key parts which are administrative safeguards, technical safeguards, physical safeguards, organizational standards, and policies and procedures. For any single risk, a combination of safeguards may be necessary because there are multiple potential vulnerabilities that exist that could negatively affect healthcare systems, according to the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management.