Gene Scriven, Chief Information Security Officer at Sabre Corporation, discussed the biggest threats to today’s enterprises during his presentation at the 2015 Chief Information Officer Leadership Forum in Dallas on March 11. In his presentation, “Top 12 Threats to Enterprise – aka ‘Gene’s Dirty Dozen,'” Scriven pointed out that information security is a major problem for many organizations, but there are several ways that organizations can protect themselves against myriad cyber threats.

Information is becoming increasingly valuable to hackers, according to Scriven. In addition, Scriven noted that today’s organizations must be proactive and explore ways to keep their sensitive information safe against rapidly evolving cyber threats. If an organization understands the importance of data management, Scriven said, it can take the necessary steps to safeguard its sensitive information: “Today, it’s the data that they’re after. It’s the credit card data. It’s the PII data. It’s all of those kinds of things that make it more valuable for them to hack environments, to break in and compromise environments. Because of that, the sophistication of the attacks is higher and everything is a whole new game.”

Also, Scriven pointed out that multiple security layers are necessary to effectively protect data. In fact, Scriven noted that an organization that leverages encryption alone could still encounter IT security problems: “Encryption’s great. Those of us in security wouldn’t survive without the capability to encrypt data. However, the encrypted data can be decrypted. What that means is you can encrypt your data with the best encryption in the world but if you’re not properly managing your encryption keys it’s as good as me having the farm break the bank.”