Lest We Forget About Enterprise Security
By Shubhendu Parth, CTO Forum Team
CIOs are spending less time on supervising what they should be doing the most—strengthening the IT infrastructure and securing enterprise digital assets.
Security may be a key thing that worries CIOs, but there are other things that keep him occupied these days.
According to a recent study done by IBM, the custodians of organisation’s ICT infrastructure spent over 55 percent of their time on activities like generating buy-in for innovative plans, implementing new technologies and managing non-technology business issues.
Of the remaining 45 percent, the CIOs spend their time on more traditional tasks of managing the ongoing technology environment—from reducing IT costs, mitigating enterprise risks and leveraging automation to lower costs elsewhere in the business.
Interestingly, majority of all surveys done across the world reveal that the biggest challenge for any organisation, and hence their CIOs, today is to manage and secure the exponentially growing digital data.
According to a recent Symantec study on data loss among Indian enterprises, only 15 percent of organisations in the country have so far adopted any form of data loss prevention measures, despite the fact that 79 percent of them have listed data loss as their most serious security concern.
Also remember that IDC predicts the digital information to surge six fold, up from 281 exabytes in 2007 to a staggering 1,773 exabytes in 2012, thereby increasing the challenge of managing and securing the avalanche of data manifold.
Worse, a recent study commissioned by the Ponemon Institute reveals that the threat of employees walking away with data has increased tremendously. In fact, the survey reveals that 59 percent employees illegally takes away organisation data while quitting job.
Does that mean that the CIOs are spending less time on supervising what they should be doing the most—strengthening the citadel and securing the digital assets—particularly when corporate wide cyber crimes and espionage have started to show a quantum jump even in developing economies like India.
While most of the CIOs may not answer in affirmation to the question, recent studies and the growing number of data theft incidents—irrespective whether they were part of a larger corporate espionage or done by a disgruntled employee out to make some quick buck—does force one to raise a concern.
On the CIOs part, I do agree that their role has been changing dramatically, primarily because technology has now become central to an organisation’s growth, and secondly because the economic crisis has made them focus more on how to use IT to produce greater business value, lower costs and higher efficiency.
Not to talk about the fact that those heading the IT infrastructure are slowly losing patience with their IT Expert tag and are looking at redefining their role by actively engaging in setting up business strategies, enabling flexibility and change, and solving business problems, not just IT problems.
And while there might not be an easy solution to this unique problem, it would help to remind that the most effective leaders do not always trade old for new, but continuously monitor each set of challenges, evaluate them and address them in their entirety.
In other words, the most effective CIOs consider the full range of possible influences, including their changing roles.
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The CTO Forum is India’s leading fortnightly magazine for technology decision makers. It promotes the exchange of informed perspectives and insights on trends, management techniques and new IT business strategies, between CIOs and other stakeholders. The CTO Forum is acknowledged as a ‘trusted source’ of knowledge for top management responsible for balancing the demands on technology for ‘growth and governance’.
The Publisher gives permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author and to Information-Security-Resources.com
Filed under: Breach, CTO Forum, Cloud computing, D&O Liability, FEATURE ARTICLE, Financial, Insider Threat, Sarbanes-Oxley, Uncategorized, due diligence, hackers, identity-theft, malware, privacy, virtualization
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