RISK: Gartner suggests attitude shift to combat massive data risks

A new report from Gartner says 60 percent of digital businesses will suffer serious service failures by 2020, mostly because IT security teams won’t be able to manage digital risk.

Gartner outlined some remedies as part of its report, many of which involve an attitude shift over a practical change. Instead of trying to prevent every threat, businesses will need to transition into detecting malicious behaviour in advance. But the report also emphasizes acceptance, saying the “perfect protection is not achievable.”

“Organizations will learn to live with acceptable levels of digital risk as business units innovate to discover what security they need and what they can afford,” said Gartner Vice President Paul Proctor.

Traditional maximum security controls, for example, will no longer work in a business area where speed is important. The report explains that “organizations that are able to successfully establish an ecosystem that balances protecting and growing the business will remain competitive and in a position to address cyber-security threats.”

Organizations will also have to get used to dealing with risks in technologies and assets they no longer own or control. While it used to be easy to protect data that sat in data centres, corporate data traffic will soon be flowing directly from mobile devices or from the cloud. This shift will also put a lot more power in the hands of individual employees who, in turn, will have to consider how their behaviour affects the rest of the enterprise.

This story was originally published by Canadian Insurance Top Broker.