Interview: Fred Cohen, inventor of computer virus defense techniques

David Geer recently spoke with Fred Cohen, an early and principal inventor of computer virus defense techniques, a widely sought information protection consultant, and author of the popular Chief Information Security Officer's Toolkit series of books. Following is an edited transcript of that conversation. You may also listen to the original interview here, or visit our Podcast Center for more audio interviews.

David Geer: We're going to start off with a basic question and see where we go. In your view, what are the primary information protection policies and practices?



Fred Cohen: That's a big, complicated area to cover. Information protection covers a very broad range of factors from HR, people-related issues through legal issues. It deals with risk management. It has to deal with testing and change control and technical safeguards, both physical and logical, has incident management aspects. It has auditing aspects. It has to do with awareness and such things and documentation. So it's really a very broad subject area. So typically, the number of policies involved for a large enterprise is on the order of 40.



Geer: And I assume then, that just protecting information is far from plugging the holes?

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