Expanding What's Thinkable

May 1, 2007 12:00 PM, Larry Anderson, Editor

           

How's this for a happy coincidence? At a time when the profile of security is on the rise at many companies, when the consequences of good security are becoming integrally linked to other departments in the organization; this is the time when technology is available that makes such higher profile and increasing involvement possible.

Maybe it is no coincidence that “convergence” has two different definitions in our marketplace, and yet is used almost interchangeably to mean either … and both.

Whether you're talking about convergence of technologies (physical and logical security) or about convergence of corporate operations (physical and logical security, human resources, building management, etc.), one often uses the term without further clarification.

Which seems to work fine because, at the end of the day, maybe they are the same thing.

Increasingly, security is seen in the context of how it contributes to a company's business goals. We now hear terms such as return on investment (ROI) applied to security, a relationship that for years was generally assumed to be ill-defined or unable to be quantified. We hear discussions of security contributing to a company's business strategy, or of it being a full-fledged partner in the business rather than having the narrowly focused role of yesteryear.

And yet for every proposed new role/stature for security, there is an available technology that enables the realization of that role/stature. Network connectivity puts security information at the fingertips of corporate management and employees. Technologies like video analytics yield benefits beyond security, such as the ability to audit best practices or to ensure conditions and operations at remote locations.

Which brings up a chicken-or-egg question: Are technologies developing to answer the changing needs of the enterprise, or is the enterprise adapting its expectations to the changing capabilities of the technologies?

In either case, it's all convergence. Which is all good.

We welcome your feedback: E-mail landerson@securitysolutions.com

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