Security content on Enterprise CIO Forum

Happy New Year, CIOs! It is now or never sings The King in his immortal piece—tomorrow, next month or next year being too late.  The New Year gives you an opportunity to identify strategic steps you can take in 2013 to create change, based upon your experience in 2012.

At a recent CIO conference, CIOs shared that vendor management is a focus area with cloud providers (SAAS). IDC research shows worldwide spending on public IT cloud services will be more than $40B in 2012 and will approach $100B in 2016. Over the 2012–2016 forecast period, public IT cloud services will enjoy a CAGR of 26.4%. IDC predicts that in the long haul public cloud will win the war with private clouds. 

Speaking of Laws and Regulations Governing the Cloud Computing Environment, we cannot ignore the latest cybersecurity bills proposed this year. There have been many cyber bills proposed, but none was as important as the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, supported by the Obama Administration. Cybersecurity is a top administration priority for Obama’s second term.

Yesterday, we kicked off a Service Futures SIG within the International Society of Service Innovation Professionals (ISSIP), where we plan to focus on issues like this and its effect on organizations and their change management activities. The biggest trends are thoroughly discussed in the trade press, but we're trying to understand these issues earlier and from a more diverse set of perspectives.

It’s not hard to see the importance of security in this new, interconnected, digital world.  There is no hiding from the myriad of threats that seek to misuse the explosive growth of retained data and computation that defines the mortal plane.  From governments to industry to private citizens, we are all acutely aware of how helpless and vulnerable we the all of us are from the predations of digital thieves, technology anarchists, and political institutions that seek to protect us by exploiting us.

CTOvision.com editor and former Defense Intelligence Agency CTO Bob Gourley (r.) gives examples of security as a revenue producer. How much security is enough? That depends on an enterprise's tolerance for risk. He also talks about security in the context of functionality. Enterprise CIO Forum community manager John Dodge conducts the interview. 

Follow John Dodge on Twitter.

Very useful....JD

Cloud computing has been a hot topic during the last few years for technology specialists all over the world. Cloud computing has been adopted by many enterprises, but still challenges continue to rise. With all the articles and documentation on this subject, there are many myths that have developed over time. So here are the most common myths regarding cloud computing: security, data loss and performance. 

Security is compromised in the cloud

"Users in the end are critical of the whole risk and security situation," says HP's chief information security officer Rich Armour. He offers insight about how HP approaches information security at a very high level as well from a tactical perspective.     

A white paper from management consulting firm Navint Partners LLC seems to indicate large enterprises are enjoying success with their cloud efforts. Indeed, 90% said in a survey that reaped the projected savings the cloud would yield; 80% said  the cloud gave them a competitive advantage; 64% said the cloud has a "significant impact on process efficiency and effectiveness;" and 46% said they had money in the IT budget specifically for cloud computing.