Like a red morn that even betokened, Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field, Sorrow to the shepherds, woe unto the birds, Gusts and foul flaws to herdsmen and to herds.

—Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis (1593)

If it has been some time since you have read and studied Shakespeare, let me offer another version of the warning in the epigraph:

Red sky in the morning—Sailors take warning.

—Author, unknown

Don Ulsch has once again, in his most recent book, clearly explained the cyber threat risks. This threat became crystal clear to me, when, as U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, I was approached by a U.S.–based Fortune 150 company that was being extorted by an organized crime syndicate, operating with impunity, in an eastern European country. The demand: cash. The risk for the company: the loss of years of product research and development and hundreds of millions of dollars of future revenue.

Frustratingly, the organized crime syndicate operated in a place beyond the reach of our federal government resources. The lessons I learned during that investigation were the great and growing cyber risks faced by U.S. companies and the limited abilities of our government to protect those companies and their shareholders from this harm. It is morning in corporate America, and many are facing a red sky.

Notwithstanding this real and escalating harm that costs our government, consumers, and the private sector billions in losses, far too many executives continue to ignore the “perfect storm” we are facing.

Louis Pasteur once said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” Don Ulsch explains how chance also favors the prepared company.

When Thomas Alva Edison said “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration,” his idea of perspiration was hard work, not worry. To be successful in protecting a company's assets from today's threats requires 99 percent preparation and 1 percent perspiration. For those executives who view their companies as less than 99 percent prepared, Don Ulsch's book is just the right prescription. And like the early sailor viewing the sunset, the benefits for those prepared executives will be a “red sky at night—and the executives delight.”