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When did you last think about the real perimeter of your organization? Think about how much work takes place on smart phones, laptops, iPad’s and even the good old telephone? Think about how much information is exchanged through channels that your firewall doesn’t event see? I think you’ll conclude a lot.
With an increasing number of people working out of the office, the volume of work carried out beyond the firewall is increasing (3 or 4G networks) and business boundaries have become foggy. It’s no longer quite so easy to say your data is secure and controlled.
Not just about security
What’s clear is that firewalls are becoming less and less relevant. Information systems were traditionally built on the premise that an organization is self-contained. Transactional systems, content management systems and data warehouses form the backbone of these systems and management of them relies primarily on securing information exchange within the firewall.
The recent storm of cloud technology –‘the virtual server solution’– now enables business to move and share information at high speeds. Most IT departments however, are still secured at the level of pre-cloud boundaries. Hard-coded extensions to pre-cloud infrastructure used to be able to cover these issues but this is not sustainable. Businesses must move towards these new productive ways of sharing critical information.
Whereas the cloud has enabled many companies to drastically increase their overall productivity levels. It is not without serious threats. For instance e-mail and removable disk drives had been thought to move information at acceptable and manageable security levels. They have however proven to be one of the main causes of data loss or leakage. Furthermore today’s workforce is highly mobile, and attempts to secure information within corporate boundaries are systematically failing due to the administrative burden involved and the users ever increasing need for speed. Users are consequently moving their data from old to new systems, and where IT used to only secure information; it now needs to control information beyond the firewall as well.
So let’s talk about the power to control. You can’t block access without an alternative. And you can’t completely rely on culture and education. Therefore in order to allow people to increase productivity through sharing or ‘collaborating’, you need to establish some core principles. These typically focus around three main pillars: Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability.
Confidentiality ensures that information is accessible only to those authorized to have access. Integrity means safeguarding the accuracy and completeness of information and process methods. Availability ensures that authorized users have access to information and associated assets when required. Therefore, the boundary has moved from not only limiting access to certain information, but to controlling the entire information security workflow as well.
M&A and sharing critical business information
Fortunately there are many new products tailored to the needs, working practices and daily tools of today’s workforce. They use the same level of control and security as pre-cloud based infrastructure did – only within a new boundary. And importantly, they focus on making corporate life easier too. With cloud technology facilitating the due diligence process to move from physical towards virtual data rooms, the M&A market has become an early adopter of these products. Buyers, or potential buyers of companies, are legally required to audit documentation throughout the deal phase. And with data sharing including sensitive information, controls and security need to be in place at all levels. A key requirement for CIOs and CISOs is therefore enterprise-wide capabilities that can securely share information outside the firewall; while ensuring it is free flowing, and protected wherever it goes.
Always available and easy to use
A number of consumer driven requirements are shaping the evolution of new cloud technology solutions. People expect information to be continuously available, requiring synchronization of data and the ability to access and collaborate on mobile devices. This however introduces new risks to information governance strategy and new security needs for IT teams, who no longer control the devices in their extended infrastructure. As a result IT teams, and consumers too, have to focus on multiple new levels of security. Examples are remotely wiping the device, enforcing multi-factor authentication whenever content is accessed from a mobile device, or sometimes simply preventing certain documents from being accessed via mobile devices.
Usability is a second area driving the shape of cloud collaboration tools and there is high demand for simple but effective user interfaces that require minimal user training. A combination of these two is what cloud computing should be about.
For those of you familiar with DropBox, this is a great example of how perfectly suited the cloud is to emerging content-centric collaboration needs. Designed for mobile and desktop applications, it uses a very simple interface which thanks to its remarkable ease of use has led to it being widely adopted by both corporates and consumers. This is quite a coup for it was initially built to serve the needs of consumers wanting to share photos, videos etc. But it turned out that knowledge workers in our organizations have exactly the same need and in the absence of suitable tools from corporate IT, consumers as employees have brought these sharing services into business organizations.
Intellectual property is king
We live in an information centric economy where manufacturing has become commoditized and intellectual property is king. The value of information is increasing to the point where intangible assets far outstrip physical assets on most companies’ balance sheets and protecting it is a key strategic priority for everyone. But protecting it involves more than just securing the data center or encrypting content when it is stored. Protecting it means controlling content throughout its lifecycle so that regardless of where it goes, whether it be mobile, web, desktop or any other device, you can determine who can access it and what they can do with it. This needs to apply at the granular level of files and people.
So, secure it, and CONTROL it, wherever it goes.
Author: C. Jeroen Kruithof, Co-founder of DataroomServices (now known as the ROOM
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