The CISO's challenges: crooks, spies, saboteurs, and vandals (and the convergence of the four).

The world, SINET Chairman and founder Robert Rodriguez believes, is less secure and more at risk than ever.

After welcoming remarks by master of ceremonies Rick Geritz, CEO of LifeJourney, Rodriguez opened this 12th annual innovator's forum with thanks to its sponsors and a brief of the current state of the information security sector. 

Rodriguez continues to regard the Sony attack (in which the North Koran government was implicated) as an inflection point. We can, he predicted, expect to see more humiliation and destruction in future attacks.

Looking at investment in the cyber security sector, he said he discerned a small decline in venture funding, but an increase in mergers and acquisition. These trends, he argued, suggest that start-ups have "a need for speed." Innovators are looking for ways of addressing the vast increase in attack surface that both the growth of mobile device usage and the now-pervasive Internet-of-things have produced. This is the challenging environment CISOs must tame. The two-day conference would be devoted to discussing the ways in which they do so.

If one common theme emerged across the presentations and panels, it was the growing risk posed by data correlation. Threat actors can now build comprehensive profiles of individuals and use those profiles for any of the many purposes such intelligence can serve: combat, espionage, sabotage, humiliation, impersonation, influence, and theft.