Your firewall, intrusion detection system, antivirus management console, LAN manager, or other security tool report tells you about its day: The quantity of events it's detected, whether antivirus is activated, which country seems to be lobbing the most attacks your way. ... Sitting through meaningless alerts risks "banner blindness" ... in which emergencies go unspotted due to input overload.But there's a relatively easy solution: Spend a few hours tearing up your existing interfaces and create your own reports, says Jonathan Grier, a digital forensics consultant who often focuses on better ways to visualize security information.

Clearly, the panic button has been pushed. But as happens too often with outbreaks of sudden or uncontrolled anxiety, it misses the point: Don't worry about China. Worry instead if the pitiful state of your information security defenses will allow any attacker to wield nothing more than malicious email attachments to steal valuable intellectual property or even state secrets.