The story of enterprises putting security first or emphasizing it in their information technology (IT) solutions is certainly not new, nor is the continued system break-ins at large and supposedly well-defended companies.
Companies buying new solutions, whether they be infrastructure, software, or services, are often beginning the conversation with the vendor or service provider with the security question. This is the new normal, and overall, it’s a good thing. But adjusting to the new normal is far more than simply pitching the requirement first.
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Right now, only security vendors and security services providers start with security. Vendors in closely related spaces, such as data center networking, campus networking, and WAN networking, have to change how they sell to clients to change themselves organizationally. Vendors and service providers cannot afford to pass the security question to another representative, or even worse, to an entirely separate internal division.
A house divided
As it is today, some vendors and service providers have a house divided. While it is historical and practical for the security team to be engineering solutions separately, the marketing and sales motion needs security to be seamless for the customer. No waiting to hear back from the security group or a single overloaded engineer who services all sales teams. Vendors and service providers should either train sales engineers on security or make sure there is a qualified sales engineer on any given team.
Further, more fundamental changes may also need to occur for vendors and service providers. Adding security to the sales team isn’t enough as these lines of business may currently have goals or sales compensation schemes that are in conflict with other lines of business. This creates back-of-house friction that will make integrating security much harder. Internally, the two teams/business units need to be harmonized, with marketing and sales for both unified.
Security first
For enterprises, there can be structural problems as well. A security-first posture means there will need to be not only mandates, but teamwork to reach the goal.
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By GlobalDataFirst, operational technology (OT), which means things like factory automation and the networks and edge computing required, is often not part of IT. There is no real problem with the OT and IT teams being separate, but the mandates need to happen for the OT team as well. This needs to be handled delicately as friction between the OT and IT teams is common. Both teams should dotted-line report to the chief information security officer.
Some enterprises also have rivalry between network, cloud, development, and security teams. It will be tempting for a given security team to use the mandate as an indicator of supremacy, rather than a sign that they need to deeply cooperate with the other teams. A lot of this depends on the corporate culture to begin with.
Not all companies have these issues, but in this era of growing security needs, it’s prudent to take a long hard look at all teams to ensure there are not issues between them bubbling under the surface.
As with most changes and projects in enterprise IT, it comes down to people. When people work for a common goal and approach change with an open mind, projects and initiatives go well. When they view change as encroaching on their ‘territory’ is when things become decidedly sub-optimal.
