Welcome to the first quarterly CSO Pakistan. Prior to the launch of CIO Magazine in Pakistan, we asked members of the industry about what trends or information impacted them the most. An overwhelming number of professionals returned with one word: security. That made the decision to launch CSO as a quarterly add-on with CIO, much easier.
There are a lot of reasons why ‘security’ is such a hot area right now. What with acts of terror taking place all around us, the scary part of the whole picture is, anything can happen, anywhere. The internet, web-based applications and export of packaged solutions make each of us vulnerable. No matter how many safeguarding measures you take, it seems that the ‘bot that is breaking into your system is one step ahead of you.
As the first issue of CSO, we’re privileged to be able to bring Barrister Zahid Jamil to you – someone who’s been creating milestones as far as the spreading the awareness about a lot of issues that deal with due process and the virtual world. He and a handful of others are laying out the groundwork for an ecosystem where you can feel secure about the integrity of the bits and bytes that you store. Faiz Ahmed Shuja, a veteran as far as the Pakistan Honeynet Project, and Salim Ghauri of NetSol, join us in this issue to explain the local IT Security environment and how ready Pakistani companies are. We managed to plug in a conversation I had with Bruce Shneier, an internationally renowned security technologist and author, about how security has transformed over the years.
A lot of other content made it into the issue and we’d love to continue getting your feedback on what we can include in the next issue. If you get a chance, look us up online at the ‘CIO Pakistan’ group on LinkedIn. The number of people responding to some polls and surveys we’ve initiated there gives us hope that we’re on the right track with what CIO’s readers are looking for.
