PRIVILEGED IDENTITY MANAGEMENT NEWS LINE
June
2011
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 Friend or Foe Philip Lieberman President & CEO Lieberman Software At the beginning of June, Lieberman Software was a sponsor at a major analyst and CIO summit in London, England. During this summit, one of the roundtable discussions revolved around the topic of the relationship between CIO and auditors. To say the least, this topic created heated responses that really hit a sensitive nerve for many of the CIOs in attendance. There appeared to be two different general opinions about auditors: 1. One group hated them and considered them to be incompetent, intrusive and bullies that caused nothing but grief for the CIO and the organization at large. For this group, they saw no benefit from the IT audit process and considered the entire process a waste of time and money. 2. The other group of CIOs saw their IT auditors as business partners who provided useful feedback on what was working from a security and risk point of view as well as what could be improved. This group also seemed to gain an understanding on risk exposure and alternative mitigation strategies. Upon digging deeper into the reasons for such a polarized response, the core of the issue of helpfulness and utility came down to whether the IT auditor had a fundamental understanding of the unique aspects of the client’s business (and wanted to become knowledgeable in same), or were blindly following a checkbox list. Another aspect that caused polarization was whether the auditor was truly knowledgeable about technologies they were evaluating, or were stumbling through the audit process with no real hands-on knowledge of the systems they were evaluating. We also saw the level of intrusion of auditors into the operations to be an element of how auditors were being perceived. In some cases, CIOs did not want auditors to provide any advice on risk mitigation (i.e. stay out of my business), and in other cases CIOs were interested in learning how to implement best practices. The other element of the auditor/CIO divide came down to whether the CIO was on the continuous compliance bandwagon or whether they were only interested in spending the least amount of money and time to achieve point in time compliance. It was clear that for most of the CIOs in the room, the auditor relationship was either warm and friendly, or angry and bitter cold. Nobody in the room seemed to be neutral with respect to the auditor’s business value and how they felt about dealing with auditors. I have always seen the IT audit process as a potentially invaluable way to protect critical business assets and reputation as well as way to introduce best practices to smooth operations and improve efficiencies. From this summit, I can see that – depending on the auditor and the company culture – the IT audit process can be a perennially bad experience for some technology executives. How do you see auditors? Email me at: phil@liebsoft.com. You can also follow me on Twitter: @liebsoft or connect with me via LinkedIn.
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What's New in Identity Week Featured commentary on our Identity Week blog this month includes:
Partner News eB2Bcom Joins Lieberman Software Partner Program eB2Bcom, a leading value added reseller for Asia Pacific, will market, sell and support Lieberman Software’s privileged identity management and security management solutions throughout Singapore, China, India and other countries in the Asia Pacific region, to enterprises seeking to locate, secure and manage their powerful privileged account passwords. “eB2Bcom has a 14 year track record in the Asia Pacific region of introducing, marketing and supporting the products of innovative IT security suppliers,” said Bob White, Founder and CEO of eB2Bcom. “ERPM is an ideal fit for our business as organizations seek to enhance their security and sensitive access control. We are very enthusiastic about partnering with Lieberman Software to bring their solutions to the Asia Pacific region.” Events / Press / Analysts
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