Martin Trzaskalik, CIO, cleverbridge

Q: How are you dealing with the current spam and security threats within your organization, such as botnets, phishing, spoofing, spyware and the like?

A: " Cleverbridge employs two strategies to protect both its internal office environment and its service platform from attacks. First, we have securely configured our infrastructure, making sure that all of our systems are hardened, all the latest available patches and up-to-date anti-malware tools have been run or installed, and we only grant access rights that are absolutely necessary. Equally important, or perhaps more so, is our second strategy: user education. Phishing attacks initially were successful because they hit an unprepared and uneducated audience. This is essentially true for every emerging threat. Ensuring that the technical staff, as well as all company employees, is familiar with new threats is a key to successfully thwarting attacks. It's about being proactive versus reactive. "