The secret of sound sleep

Security has been a human concern ever since the beginning of time. Cave men took turns to watch over their camps, countries created armies to watch over their boundaries, and companies setup security infrastructure to watch over their networks.

Throughout the year, we at Network Magazine have kept pace with the evolving security trends in our cover stories of course, and also in the regular sections like 'Security Watch'. Ever since our cover story of April 2003 established the magnitude of the security industry, we have brought to the fore the perils due to the increasing variants of old worms and new. We have even followed the mushrooming security products, from self-defending networks to hardware firewalls, and their uses in Indian companies.

Indeed, the Indian business has seen very little loss due to bug attacks. This implies that Indian CIOs have planned and executed their information security infrastructures rather well. Ironically, in most business forums these efforts to prevent business losses have been overlooked. So this issue is dedicated to the ‘League of Enterprise Defenders’, whose invaluable and sometimes unnoticed contribution has kept trouble at bay.

To recognize the CIOs' efforts we bring to you the SecureSynergy Security Strategist Award. We asked the IT people from companies about their security setups, and from the 135 applicants shortlisted nine possible winners across three categories: IT/ITES, BFSI and General. A four-member jury interviewed the nine contestants, and from them emerged three winners. To find out about them, just read on…

In the regular sections we feature case studies with Wockhardt Hospital and Heart Institute and VSNL.

The Wockhardt Hospital and Heart Institute has made innovative use of IT and set up an eICU that gives 24 X 7 monitoring coverage to the patient, and a CRM solution that makes it much easier to reach the right doctor at the right time. And VSNL has deployed power conditioning strategies to ensure uninterrupted business. We feature case studies with both these organizations in this issue.

— Sandeep Ajgaonkar, Associate Editor

sandeepa@networkmagazineindia.com