Page 11 - GCN, Jun/July 2016

CYBERSECURITY SECURITY SOLUTIONS WORKING TOGETHER
Take a Positive Approach to Security
Agencies should consider security as an enabler supporting new technologies, not an obstacle.
tate and local govern- ments are faced with numerous opportunities to boost productivity and improve the way they deliver services to the public. There are new
technologies that help agencies do things that were previously unimag- inable. The cloud and mobile devices are just the latest innovations governments can leverage to stream- line service delivery.
With these opportunities, however, comes the danger of opening the organization to greater potential threats from the outside. With the nature of cyberattacks launched against both private and public institutions becoming more sophisticated, security has steadily risen as a primary concern.
The dangers of insufficient security have been amply demon- strated in the past couple of years. Several public—and damaging—data
breaches at major retail enterprises such as Target and Sony Pictures, and government agencies such as the fed- eral Office of Personnel Management (OPM) have shown what can happen.
The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) highlights this conundrum in its recent report on State CIO Priorities for 2016. In a ranking of priority strategies, management processes and solutions CIOs are looking at for the year, such things as cloud services, business intelligence and analytics, legacy modernization
and the elevation of IT as a strategic capability are all high on the list.
At the top of the list, however, is security and risk management. It’s the third straight year these concerns have headed the NASCIO list. The association also notes that in too many state governments, those are still seen as the province of the IT department—technical issues instead of business issues.
SECURITY IS NOT A
STUMBLING BLOCK
When it comes to a developing an organizational vision for security, it is too frequently viewed as an obstacle to performance and productivity. Management often sees security as a negative when it comes to helping employees do their jobs effectively, and for delivering public-facing services. Agency and IT leaders must weigh the trade-offs between using new technologies and services, and how the related security would affect workflow.
Dell Security believes that’s the wrong way to view security. It main- tains that security “done right” can help government organizations to more readily accept technology. Then they can use that new technology to help their workers be more productive and to safely access the information and applications they need to do their jobs.
“You can increase protection of key assets, while at the same time
Sponsored Content
Shutterstock.com