The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) not only protects IT systems with special hardware, software and secure business processes, but he or she also creates, implements and communicates the organization’s digital information security policies and procedures.

Small business doesn’t necessarily mean small data. In fact, according to Michael Bruemmer, vice president at Experian Data Breach Resolution, thieves prefer to target small- to medium­–sized businesses (SMBs) because many lack the resources or expertise to manage cybersecurity. Retailers are especially easy targets for cybercriminals who look to hijack credit card data, but customers aren’t the only victims.

Let’s start with the good news. Malicious insider activity is relatively rare. Unfortunately, even though outsiders account for 85 percent of cybersecurity incidents, the damage often is substantially greater when an insider strikes.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor intends to introduce new legislation to make HealthCare.gov more secure.

In 2014, McAfee Labs expects that Ransomware will proliferate on mobile devices, attacks using advanced evasion techniques will come of age, and social platforms will be used more aggressively to target the finances and personal information of consumers, and the intellectual property and trade secrets of business leaders.

Security experts at Unisys Corporation predict that the coming year will usher in broad-based adoption of encryption as enterprises respond to recent disclosures that unencrypted data traffic inside enterprises is vulnerable to detection from outsiders.

Shoppers who used credit cards or debit cards at Target between November 27 and December 15, 2013 may have been hacked.

The World Federation of Exchanges launched a cyber security committee to collaborate on finding the most effective ways to protect the global capital markets from cyber crime, Reuters reports. The Cyber Security Working Group will be chaired by Mark Graff, chief information security officer at Nasdaq OMX Group, and vice-chaired by Jerry Perullo, who heads information security at Intercontinental Exchange Group, and the committee is made up of members from dozens of exchanges and clearing houses, the article says.

Cyber threats are the “new normal” for the financial services industry, according to Booz Allen in its annual list of the “Top Financial Services Cyber Security Trends for 2014.”