Verizon (News - Alert) has introduced a new evidence-based risk management service that helps companies analyze the effectiveness of their data security measures and determine whether they need to be strengthened.

While prioritizing security initiatives based on risk reduction and cost effectiveness, Incident Analytics Service (IAS) can help enterprises strengthen their security posture, improve risk-management planning and better allocate resources.  By providing anonymous benchmarking information on peer security incidents, losses, controls and security spending, the new service also helps enterprises better understand how their security posture stacks up against peers. IAS provides customers with timely risk information via its online dashboard, and is delivered as software-as-a-service.

“For years, enterprises looking to assess and strengthen their security procedures have been hampered by an alarming lack of data," said Peter Tippett (News - Alert), vice president, industry solutions and security practices, Verizon. "But with IAS, that is no longer the case.  The service provides enterprises with access to a wealth of data that can help them better understand their security posture and reduce risk -- not through guesswork, but through much-needed comparative data and security metrics.”

With the help of a Web application that provides access to data from Verizon's extensive historical and ongoing incident analysis research, one of the largest information risk repositories in the world, the offering, IAS enables customers to describe, track, analyze and benchmark data breach incident metrics. Voluntarily and anonymously reported by participating organizations, the application is a repository for information collected from security incidents, the company stated in a press release.

Recently, the company was recognized as one of the top workplaces for information technology (IT) professionals. With its highest ranking to date, Verizon Wireless (News - Alert) placed fifth on Computerworld's "Best Places to Work in IT" list, which was announced today, and the company was once again the highest ranked wireless provider. Computerworld' s annual ranking of the top work environments for technology professionals is based on a comprehensive questionnaire.

Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Raju’s articles, please visit his columnist page.