Like we are citizens of our various communities, Today’s end users are active, . When you need to go somewhere, you likely have options – you could drive, walk, take the train, take the bus, ride a bike, use a ride-share service.
As an enterprise end user today, you similarly have a lot of options.
Building out and securing a network, then, emerges as setting up systems that allow end users to leverage their options in a way that best suits their needs – but doesn’t put them in harm’s way.
Municipalities are constantly doing this. They plan new roads to reduce traffic congestion. They change speed limits and re-architect turn lanes to improve safety. They build bike lanes to provide commuting alternatives. They launch pilot programs of other forms of personal transportation, like scooters, to see how they improve things. They determine emerging needs and demographic shifts and, on that basis, introduce new public transportation routes and make service more frequent. They test out new smart city technologies, like roads that light up when black ice is present, to address age-old dangers.
Using this model, IT departments can build out networks that empower rather than restrict. They can use data to understand where things could be better and implement new solutions accordingly.
Cybersecurity pros following this model treat cybersecurity as a living, breathing set of objectives adhered to on and offline and promote enlightened compliance from users rather than demanding they follow a set of rules to check a box. And they stay on top of the news, the threat intelligence and other developments in the field – to evaluate the real value of new cybersecurity solutions in their particular context before making an investment.
Today we call the technologies we implement in IT enabling technologies, so we should be thinking about the IT department as an “enabling department.”