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SECURITY - IMPORTANCE, RISKS, FUTURE.
With the technological evolution and the globalization of businesses being added on top of a series of reports involving security problems, company awareness about this issue has matured, and many plans are being reevaluated. Today, when sending a simple email a company is issuing a reasonable amount of sensitive information out to the electronic medium.
The more advanced the use of information technology resources by a company, the more this information will be digitized, processes automated, and, consequently, the more exchanges, information, and services will be circulating within and outside the organization.
Payrolls, supplier order histories, customer data, credit card numbers, product formulae and composition, in addition to price lists, virtually everything a company has that is most critical, is stored in electronic form. If the impact of compromising availability, integrity, or confidentiality of each of this information could be measured, we could assess the importance of an investment in security.
The risks are many. With the ever increasing use of the Internet within companies, there are countless situations where information can be compromised. A simple e-mail can mean the start of an invasion which in a few hours could compromise all information existing within the internal systems, as well as passwords from all types of users, even the most critical ones. Is it possible to measure the impact of e-mails from the company president being read by a competitor? Or new marketing plans being accessed through an attack that occurred through that seemingly harmless application in the company website?
The future shows that technology will bring an unheard-of level of integration for information systems, whether they are for the company's internal or external use. Enormous productivity gains will be obtained, but the information risks will also be multiplied. New technologies, such as wireless networks, bring sizable opportunities for new businesses, but also bring undesired visitors which are ever closer to what we want to protect.
This technological growth, however beneficial, must be closely watched by professionals which are aware of the new threats that can arise at any moment. Information security, an issue which was in the realm of large corporations and the military only, now is becoming essential to any business, since everyone, sooner or later, will be benefiting from the advances of an ever more connected world.
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