Security Transformation: Digital Defense Strategies to Protect your Company's Reputation and Market Share - Hardcover

A Practical Process for Evaluating Your Company's Digital Security Needs­­and Constructing an Effective, Affordable Defense

The powerful advantages that the World Wide Web provides for companies around the world­­with its unprecedented accessibility, speed, and integration­­also create powerful vulnerabilities. Security Transformation details how your company can limit its exposure to these risks while providing a digital environment that is conducive to expansion of its markets, growth of its business, and successful partnering with like-minded organizations.

The authors­­experienced consultants at KPMG, today's global leader in e-Business consulting and solutions­­show you how to construct a security environment designed to curtail undesirable intrusions, whether from external sources or from inside your own walls. Security Transformation provides detailed strategies to help you:

• Evaluate security needs, factoring in actual activity-based solutions and costs
• Put in place an effective response that can mitigate disruption or damage, plus identify and remedy intrusion after-effects
• Integrate security technologies with existing corporate systems and strategies

Your company's reputation, customer loyalty, product development, and market value depend on its ability to provide effective digital security. Let Security Transformation show you how to evaluate the security of your entire enterprise, produce a realistic risk profile, and establish an appropriate enterprise security environment.

• A survey reports that 90 percent of respondents have detected cyber attacks within the past 12 months­­with the top 250 averaging nearly $1 million in losses
• A bored 15-year-old blocks access for hours to top global e-Businesses­­including Amazon, eBay, E*Trade, and others­­resulting in millions of dollars in lost revenue
• Your company's computer system is infiltrated by a disgruntled former employee, who hijacks customer credit card numbers and company records­­along with your reputation

The first two of the above stories are based on fact. The third hasn't occurred­­yet. But how can you be sure that it won't?

Security Transformation shows you how to determine your company's biggest vulnerabilities, details the methods for assessing those vulnerabilities, then provides the tools you need to look beyond your current security environment to one that will serve your present and future needs in the most scalable, seamless, and least disruptive way. Accessible, non-technical, and jargon-free, this timely book presents a practical approach for ensuring your company's ability to take full advantage of the many profitable advantages of today's digital world while protecting itself against the unwanted intrusions that have become a fact of life.

Interviews, examples, case histories, and insights from the client files of KPMG illustrate the direct operational, financial, and marketing benefits of taking system security seriously. Covering everything from the psychological aspects of system security to the actual nuts and bolts details of instituting a structured Enterprise Security Architecture­­one that effectively supports your company's business strategies and objectives­­Security Transformation presents:

• A technical framework for understanding Web security issues, and assessing security risks
• Leadership and education guidelines so that security solutions are embraced by employees­­rather than resisted
• Techniques to locate and implement anti-virus and intrusion detection systems that allow later expansion and scalability

As everything from retail marketing through internal corporate communication takes advantage of the tremendous efficiencies and cost advantages of the World Wide Web, computer network security is no longer a little-noticed, back-office responsibility­­it is among the most critical issues facing businesses today. Security Transformation looks at the issue from every angle, and acquaints business decision makers with the bottom-line issues of security they need to understand in order to effectively transact business in an increasingly digital world.

Mary McCarthy is vice chair of the Information, Communications, and Entertainment Practice of KPMG LLP. An influential e-Business and financial management advisor to many of the world's leading high-technology companies, she is coauthor of the bestseller Digital Transformation.

Stuart Campbell is national partner-in-charge of KPMG's Information Risk Management Division. He partners with multinational clients in assessing and managing a wide variety of technology risks and concerns.