Over the past decade, IT evolution has been explosive. Businesses, individuals, and countries have quickly embraced the transformation offered by new technologies. Although the advantages of increased mobility, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, and similar insightful solutions are easy to measure, crucial elements like security, privacy, and compliance often suffer from a lack of attention.
In the rush to implement greater productivity, disconnect issues can cause serious roadblocks. By understanding inconsistencies that are responsible for this digital world disconnect, companies are able to integrate evolving improvements without sacrificing security. Connecting the fragmented digital world simply involves identifying the areas where security and compliance conflicts arise and then enacting actionable policies and procedures that will eliminate them.
Internal Communication
The chain of command in any organization has a big influence on the level of disconnect experienced. Security and compliance are handled through various methods, but consistency is the key. Since personnel are one of the highest security risks, identifying disconnects in different levels of the company -- from the top down -- can help solve these issues.
Information Overload
Often, changes in policies and guidelines are ignored because of information overload. If employees receive an excess of emails concerning operations, many of them are ignored. This continuous stream of messages, social media, and updates becomes overwhelming, and often, pertinent communications may not reach the right individual. Limiting, organizing, and sorting these types of messages helps remove the problem.
Contract Negotiations
Specific contracts regarding the protection of information and data services are another potential digital world disconnect. Adapting contract provisions into applicable actions, policies, and procedures during and after deployment can be difficult. Moreover, the individuals who arrange the contracts are almost never the ones who implement and operate the application or service. Businesses must consider the best way to convey the security involved to actual users in order to prevent a digital disconnect.
Tools and Policies
Developing effective information management and security policies which actually provide an organization with the ability to deploy and migrate tools that support operations is another area where the digital world experiences disconnect. Writing polices is easy; enforcing them is hard. For example, a company may enforce strict controls concerning confidential data in enterprise-specific tools, but lose that control in a BYOD (bring your own device) environment. Identifying this type of disconnect strengthens security.
A number of new solutions for cyber security are available, but identifying disconnects that happen outside the scope of traditional management procedures gives companies the ability to address those issues quickly and at a lower cost.