Risk Management / Opinions

It can’t stop every breach, but it can spare people from subjecting selfies to the same security barriers as mobile wallets, writes Dror Nadler of Cellrox.

We tend to approach new vendors based on the products they sell and choose vendors largely based on what we believe the products do. Unfortunately, this leads us to buy solutions that we often never fully deploy or that often fail to meet our expectations. What's more, we rarely conduct a causal analysis of the problems.

Restoring trust in our information systems after Edward Snowden's NSA revelations will take years -- if it can be done at all.

Issuing deceptive statements is no way to win back customers' trust. That's a lesson for anyone who might find itself in Target's position someday.

In the case of technology contracts, I am an advocate for a prenup. We are talking about businesses - businesses don’t have a natural end point. They can go on forever, or end abruptly.

A list of the basic 'don'ts' to consider before saying 'I do' to a technology investment - whether it is hardware, software or serviceswhether it is hardware, software or services.

The attractiveness of adopting cloud services continues to grow. Who can argue against access to the latest technologies, a pay as you go model, rapid provisioning/de-provisioning and on demand scaling? All of these benefits lead to improved agility, faster time to market and a business focus on the business (not managing IT). Many of the risks of cloud computing have become less frightening as organisations have become more comfortable with data sovereignty and availability issues.

What should IT be paying attention to above all else? How about our organisations' potential for human effectiveness?

Can anyone access the data that you trust to the safekeeping of a cloud-computing vendor? It's a good question, made all the more relevant by the revelations regarding the National Security Agency's Prism program. So how can you best address these issues in your contract with your cloud vendor?

A CIO said I was like the guy who turned up the day after hurricane Katrina -- I come in when technology transformations fail.

Most days the modern chief information officer faces climate change issues: changes to the business climate and environment driven by fluctuating economies, tighter regulation and compliance, ever more complex business structures, human resource issues - the list goes on. It is a vortex environment that requires a wide palette of skills. To keep pace with the growth, speed and complexity of operating in such a vortex , CIOs have morphed into technical specialists with strategic and visionary skills, and are turning their attention to the challenge of developing more robust risk-management strategies and policies.
In the "bad old days", technical specialists were not considered part of the strategic management team but merely part of the back office of the business. The focus was on creating technology solutions as requested by the company. Typically, this used to involve getting a specification brief, then retreating to the basement to spend the next eight to 20 months working to produce something that met those specifications.

The CFO can be one of the most influential individuals in your enterprise, in terms of how IT is perceived and managed. However, at times, the two do not see eye to eye and view each other as stumbling blocks to achieving their individual and enterprise goals. This is particularly problematic when a “parent/child” relationship exists because the CIO reports to the CFO.
I hear recurring (and disturbing) themes from CIOs that many CFOs think: