Each year hundreds of hopefuls enter the SC Awards U.S. Competition is fierce, and preparing an effective nomination is crucial for cutting through the clutter to make sure your product, service, or individual gets attention. This webcast will offer tips and insights into what qualities make for outstanding awards nominations, showcasing the best work of the industry, as well as a look at some of the most successful nominations of past years.

We've all heard about the security awareness training programs, yet problems still abound. So how should these programs evolve and what can companies do to better equip and entice their end-users to help protect critical data. And which departments should be involved to prevent a non-malicious or disgruntled employee from leaking data?

We learn from leading CSOs how to deal with day-to-day tasks, colleagues requests and corporate-wide demands that drive their projects and plans.

Sure, many companies consider spam a same-old threat associated with service-related problems, such as slower servers. But the bad guys are putting innovation into spam, especially new forms of image spam, which seem to get more complicated by the week.

For the bad guys, vulnerabilities are the name of the game. As hackers seek to find new holes and exploit them with malicious payloads, companies must react quickly and prudently. What is the best approach to deal with these security risks as attackers continue to find their way in through more vectors and platforms?

Establishing and maintaining a strong risk management posture is often touted as the best stance an organization can take to meet IT security objectives, ultimately helping companies protect critical assets and applications. But exactly what this entails varies from organization to organization.

Metrics are a formulaic approach to proving the worth of security tools. Often seen as the "holy grail" for security practitioners, metrics are seen as key to getting the support and budget they need. But just what sort of formula proves successful? In this webcast, we will hear from industry experts who have found success in their organizations.

On the night of Feb. 6, 2007, over 600 IT security professionals turned out to the Hilton San Francisco to toast the best that the industry has to offer. The 2007 SC Awards honored products, people and services in 29 categories, carefully selected by either SC Magazine's readers, or a select panel of IT security leaders and luminaries. The SC Awards are proud to recognize those companies that have made an important contribution to making information security stronger than ever before.

Auditing: What you need to know All companies must go through a formal auditing process to ensure they're meeting various compliance demands. In theory, this exercise will help them understand where their security holes are and how to make appropriate improvements. But how do companies ensure their auditors understand specific IT security issues and requirements? What should they look for in an auditor? We find out.

Making Sense of Malware Backdoors, keyloggers and other spyware programs seem to be everywhere. These malicious programs exploit security flaws in enterprise systems to pinch usernames and passwords so as to access critical data. So just how prevalent are these programs and what can companies do about them? Kevin Mandia and Stephen Scharf will discuss their insights and solutions.