Archive for the ‘IT Workforce’ category

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Solving Password Frustration & Insecurity

April 27th, 2012

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It’s hard to imagine that those tiny dots can lead to such personal frustration and corporate collapse. Passwords in many cases are the only thing standing guard over your sensitive information. From an organization’s perspective, they may have hundreds or even thousands of individual passwords that protect company data and all of them are ripe for the picking. In today’s world you need passwords for everything, from your social networking sites to your online banking account. People are busy running in a million different directions so nobody has the desire to memorize 10-20 passwords. I’m guilty of it as well, using the same password for multiple accounts. This concept of password reuse is the biggest problem with passwords in general according to John Sawyer, who wrote a piece for DarkReading.com called “How to Hack the Password Problem.”

In theory, people are going to do what is easy and convenient for them and memorizing a bunch of passwords falls into neither of those categories. Organizations will typically conduct some kind of security awareness training to emphasize the power of their employees’ passwords and why it is critical they take it seriously. That only goes so far though and what you might end up with are employees putting all of their passwords into an easily accessible spreadsheet or, worse yet, writing them down on a sticky note. Instead, Sawyer recommends simple desktop based management tools like Password Safe or LastPass and enterprise single sign-on solutions such as those offered by Oracle and CA. He ends with this comment, which I think hit the nail on the head in terms of password issues with users:

“…if a company wants to address an issue like passwords, then it has to make it easy for the

user and not rely solely on the user to be the more secure link in the chain.”

Then again, some feel that passwords are becoming obsolete altogether due to their unfriendly nature. How do you feel about passwords in general and what steps does your organization take to address password security?

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Posted in IT Security, IT Workforce, Strategy

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Achieve Your IT Governance Goals

April 13th, 2012

“IT Governance: Supply & Demand” is a report based on a Web Forum presented by Allen Greathouse, Director of Corporate IS Governance, Architecture, and Policy at Harris Corporation. It looks at the keys to success in achieving your governance goals, such as understanding your environment and strong PMO discipline. Potential pitfalls are examined, like poor resource management and strategic alignment. Readers will learn about the difference between “doing things right” (Supply) versus “doing the right thing” (Demand). Find out how those two elements play a pivotal role in your organization’s IT Governance.

This report excerpt describes a couple of the different keys to achieving your organization’s governance goals:

“The first key is having that close alignment with business strategy and understanding the role of IT in its achievement. Obviously every company is different but you need to have some type of organization where you get executive alignment. Harris Corporation achieves that by having division IT leads essentially sit in the business. Without their existence someone in IT would be assigned and responsible for a business entity in an executive relationship. They are very close to the day-to-day activities and responsible for the IT component of that business unit or segment. Those leads help tie in those business objectives with the IT objectives. That gives you someone in the business that understands what is taking place. As a result, when trying to sell an IT project or gain executive sponsorship to meet business objectives, you do not have to worry about coming in cold to those business entities.

A keen understanding of the decision making process in your company is essential. In some companies there is one person that makes the decisions in certain areas. For instance, when Steve Jobs was at Apple, when dealing with a design component he was personally involved in that process. You really have to understand before you can document how governance works. Who makes the decisions? The Harris model for governance probably fits best into what is called a federated or federal model. Scorecards and metrics are a critical part of the supply side for governance, or “doing things right.” These will enable you to conduct industry comparisons. Executives want to know where the money is being spent and how that compares to your particular industry…”

IMF members can download the full report on IT Governance: Supply & Demand here.

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Posted in IT Executive Management, IT Workforce, Member Identified Trends, Strategy

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Tops-Down Corporate Social Media

April 6th, 2012

Social media has emerged as a dominant force in people’s lives over the past several years. Individuals are using the platform to connect with others and share information on a daily basis. Whether you’re a Facebook Friend or Twitter Follower, you are part of this revolution. However, as quickly as social media has grown on the personal side, it is still relatively new in the corporate sector. Many organizations have begun focusing attention on the bleeding over of social tools into their enterprises. They are looking to use internal social networking as a way to promote their brands and connect with their customers. Some organizations have even piloted internal social tools in an effort to promote enterprise-wide collaboration. Social media is driving business transparency and engagement, creating both new challenges and opportunities.  As with any other initiative you try to push through the company, it is important to gain support from the executive leadership. In the case of social media, Senior Executives like CEOs, CIOs, etc. shouldn’t be afraid to set the example for their employees. They need to be leading the social media charge and pushing this movement tops-down. A new study even found that social media-active CEOs are more trustworthy. These quotes from Information Week’s article on “Why CIOs Must Be More Social” are pretty telling:

“If CIOs are charged with building a social business, shouldn’t they have a social presence?” Fidelman asked, suggesting that “CIOs who don’t get social might not be CIOs next year.” Yet even in conservative industries like finance, there are CIOs like Royal Bank of Scotland’s Ian Alderton (#4 on the list) who are social standouts, Fidelman said.” -Mark Fidelman, Chief Social Strategist at Harmon.ie

Fidelman recently compiled a list of the Top 25 Most Social CIOs. Here is the Top 10:

1. SAP, Oliver Bussmann

2. Google, Benjamin Fried

3. Pemex, Abraham Galan

4. Royal Bank of Scotland, Ian Alderton

5. Microsoft, Anthony Scott

6. Supervalu, Wayne Shurts

7. Kimberly-Clark, Ramon Baez

8. Jacobs Engineering Group, Cora Carmody

9. Tesco, Mike McNamara

10. Omnicom Group, Kenneth Corriveau

For our members who are interested in corporate social media, we encourage you to check out a couple of upcoming IMF events:

April 26th - Web Forum on “Social Media’s Benefit to the Business” led by Kandy White from Verizon

June 7th & 8th - IMF Innovation Forum discussion on “Corporate Use of Social Networking to Promote Collaboration”

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Posted in IT Innovation, IT Workforce, News, Social Media, Strategy

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