Leadership By Numbers

Information Security magazine has in insightful perspective on real-world security which positions Domino as providing the right working vision (http://informationsecurity.techtarget.com/magItem/1,291266,sid42_gci1063095_login,00.html). I agree, of course, because I work with Domino, but I'm still surprised how hard it is to explain Domino's uniqueness. When I describe the difference between Domino and other systems, I usually describe non-Domino systems as “hard and crunchy on the outside, and soft and chewy on the inside.” Well, those are almost the exact words of Paul Simmonds, CISO of Imperial Chemical Industries.

In his article he writes in favor of going beyond securing the perimeter with the endless tuning of firewalls and proxy configurations. “The enterprise perimeter is dissolving under the tidal wave of Web services, mobile computing and Web-base applications.” So, he asks if it is possible to run a business, securely, without continuing to pour resources on the perimeter.

I do it every day; my corporate laptop, with Lotus Notes and 8 GB of replicated corporate databases, regularly connects to hotel Ethernets and public wireless access points. . . . If it works for me and the other 5,000 laptop-carrying executives in my organization, why shouldn't it work for everyone?”