Middle East Organizations Urged to Mind the Security Gap Between Business and IT Managers

Disconnect Between IT and Business Operations Means Regional Organizations May Lack Strong Security Policy, says Condo Protego

Dubai, United Arab Emirates: Middle East organizations need to bridge the divide between business decision makers and their IT counterparts to formulate effective security policies, according to one of the region’s leading data storage and protection companies.

While 57 percent of regional CIOs and IT decision makers surveyed by the International Data Corporation said that maintaining a secure environment was their biggest technology challenge in 2014, 41 percent of organizations contacted for a separate report by Symantec and Deloitte didn’t consider procedures such as installing security software to be a necessity.

“It’s a recurring problem that IT managers and CIOs here in the region are not made aware of business goals and objectives, or even operational challenges,” said Savitha Bhaskar, Chief Operating Officer at Condo Protego. “IT isn’t yet leveraged as a business enabler by many organisations here, therefore when security policies and control of data that goes in and out of an organization are left to the IT department, which often isn’t equipped to make those kinds of decisions, it's a recipe for disaster.”

By working with their business counterparts, IT managers can determine policies such as levels of access to information, storage and retention of data and monitoring of data flow, Bhaskar said.

“Companies need to think broader than just IT - how does this affect the whole operation?” Bhaskar said.

“To draw parallels, if you manage an airline and you are required to come up with a strategy to protect your employees from coming in contact with or transmitting a known virus during the course of their travel, the strategy will need to comprehensively cover many related aspects, such as onboard hygiene and medical equipment, and not merely a change in travel policy that stops flights to affected countries, which could work against the airline’s business goals of revenue generation and geographical coverage.”

“Similarly, if an organization wants to put in place an IT security strategy to protect its data, then just getting IT to put in firewalls and threat management solutions, such as antivirus software at endpoints, is not enough. It needs to be more comprehensive than that, but that's only possible if IT managers are in sync with an organization’s business goals and objectives,” Bhaskar explained.

Security is still one of the biggest IT issues in the Middle East, with more than two-thirds, 68 percent, of organizations lacking the internal capabilities to protect against sophisticated cyber-attacks, according to the Symantec and Deloitte research.

Condo Protego provides quality consultation services for its clients, working closely with an organization to determine data access needs, and establishing data security policies before implementing a solution.

“As cyber-attackers become increasingly sophisticated here in the region, Condo Protego is stepping up its efforts to provide next-generation protection against security threats and educate our customer base on the need for protection,” Bhaskar said.

“We work very closely with the IT teams to educate them on the need to involve business management, and to enable them to understand and control what goes in and what goes out of the organization.”