I guess it is a sign of my age that the years seem to slide past faster nowadays. It is staggering to think that it is the start of yet another decade, and ten years ago the I.T. industry just got done holding its collective breath for Y2K—a computing event that many thought would be cataclysmic. While no disaster ever materialized, it did help to point out how technology-dependent we have all become in our businesses and in our personal lives.

Security should be considered the new Y2K as it demands the attention of every citizen in every country, and has the potential of bringing us to our computing knees. While the year 2000 came and went without major incident, barely a day goes by that another breach doesn’t occur, or someone pays the price of one. We have seen an increasing barrage of attacks come from every direction, from every country, and via every form of communication. And even some “legitimate” businesses have turned out to be the culprit, and their actions have resulted in a new requirement for yet another regulation or legislation (think Sarbanes-Oxley). As someone who works in this industry full-time, I only see this continuing to worsen as cyber-criminals become more sophisticated and well-funded.

So as we embark on the ride into the next decade, I really hope that the vulnerabilities that I see every day are seriously contemplated and then addressed. For that to happen, it is critical that management gives the necessary consideration to their I.T. budget to help protect the very assets that their business survives on. This is true even in a tepid economy as employees fear for their jobs, and those that remain have to perform even more responsibilities. “ROSI” is an industry term, meaning “Return On Security Investment,” and although it might be calculated slightly differently from the more traditional “ROI,” there is a return nonetheless. One of the returns is that your business stays IN business—a pretty significant return, and something that should get the attention of your corporate management.

The good news is that many of us continue to run our core businesses applications on IBM i. While it does not come pre-configured as an overly secure environment, it has the ability—with a little help from your friends at PowerTech—to be one of the most secure servers available today. The features that are built in to the operating system all work together as a tightly integrated ring of protection around the data. And our popular software provides additional tools to make the life of the security officer more productive, and your data more secure.

So, as we start another new year and a new decade, resolve to finally take the steps you know you need to take to get your server in shape. If you don’t, it might mean more than your system just gaining a few extra holiday pounds!

Happy New Year, everyone!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 10:09 am and is filed under Other, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.