- Not Anymore, Continued
- Threats
- Known Vulnerabilities and Known Exploits
- Targeted Threats
- Critical Systems and Threats
- Countermeasures
- Regulatory Issues
- Technology
- A Word About the Long Term: IPv6
- The Organizational Security Posture
- What Parts of Constant Vigilance Should I Outsource?
- What to Keep
- Who to Seek
- You Have Just Charted a Course: Let's Set Sail
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Technology
Your and every company's technology—the bread and butter that has enabled you to go global—shifts throughout its lifecycle before it is retired and replaced. These movements range from subtle to seismic, and they occur in phases. Once a quarter, patches pop up and are added. Every year your Oracle databases are upgraded from X.1 to X.2. Every handful of years you have to consider major upgrades as Oracle moves to 9.0 and you decide to outfit the entire company with WiFi-enabled laptops. Okay, so what do you do when WiFi becomes WiMAX?
You must maintain constant vigilance regarding technology. At the writing of this book, a bevy of legacy systems are giving way to newer, faster, and potentially more secure technology. Your global security strategy must account for what technology you need as it relates to the risk and business requirements of each business owner.
Suppose, for example, that data is important and it travels on myriad laptops out the door of your company. If your concern is losing that data through theft, perhaps you want to consider the new IBM Thinkpad that carries a built-in encryption chip inside. If your concern is damaged or potentially lost data, you might want to consider the Thinkpad that devotes 20 percent of its disc space to making a mirror image of all your data. Even if you get hit by a virus and your data becomes toast, you can bring the Thinkpad to the office, boot it up, and boom!—you have your data back. These new machines, which cost about $500 more than a typical notebook, might prove more expensive in the short term, but the total cost of ownership could prove dramatically less if your investment properly accounted for the risks your people face outside the office. However, if your business owners do not even know they have the option, then that is a correctable fault.