My take on corporate security

I've been having some rather animated discussions lately about how corporations' restrictive IT policies (of late) are becoming counter-productive and soon will backfire, if not be rendered obsolete by the next wave of technology (more on that later). Then I found this article about the Hyperconnected and smiled, knowing that others are starting to get it too. Some highlights:

... networked technologies creating an exploding culture of connectivity, blurring the line between the personal and business worlds... ... as cellphones, Internet and private networks continue to interconnect, corporations will be forced to rethink their IT policies or be left behind... ... any device that can be connected – will ... pose an immense challenge to many corporations that still operate on the notion that they can and should clamp down on every kind of online activity used by its employees and clients... ... Creating a distinction between those who are inside the firewall and those outside of it, is counter-productive... ... The perimeter is gone. There's no distinction any more between personal life and business life. If the millennium generation sees the distinction in the workplace, they get frustrated and leave. To those who try to ban Facebook - good luck...

Two reasons often used by corporations to explain why restrictions are needed are security and productivity. But folks have proven that while filters may prevent access to what might be considered inappropriate web content (and who gets to decide?), they often restrict users from access to relevant content that can cost businesses real dollars in missed opportunities and information. On the security front, companies spend billions of dollars and person-hours putting hardware and software measures in place, many which prove in time to be defeat-able, yet spend virtually nothing on the resource that can have the greatest impact on a company's security posture - the employee. My position has always been that employees empowered to participate in security are a company's best and most cost-effective weapon. A worker that can't use provided technology for what they need is the exact opposite of empowered - they're a liability.

One technology that has begun the slow march to trump corporate control of internet access is WiMax. When a person can connect a laptop or desktop to a WiMax modem via USB and get unrestricted access to the internet as long as you're in range of a metropolitan area cell tower, you'll start seeing fewer employees using a corporation's link to the outside world because it has become a neutered tool by comparison.