You may think you know a lot about TEMPEST and information security; well, let's make sure. Here are five things that everyone should know.

Data, with the able assistance of the black hat hacking community, is constantly trying to escape the confines of its various containers while information security professionals everywhere are vigorously trying to stem its illicit flow. In the late 1960s, an increasingly controversial facet of this struggle piqued the U.S. government's interest, and it created the TEMPEST program to address the information security implications of data leakage through spurious electromagnetic and acoustic emissions.

Data security issues keep turning up like a bad penny.  

Last month, it was Home Depot. Before that, it was Target, where a hacker absconded with data belonging to 70 million individuals. Apple, the U.S. Federal Reserve, The Wall Street Journal, and even the ironclad U.S. National Security Agency have all been hacked into.

Being the type of person that is always looking to learn about the world and everything in it, I recently had the opportunity to spend a few days in Houston, Texas, at the Oil & Gas Cyber Security Conference. Boy, was it an eye opening experience!