Do you have a Snowden in your Organization?

As information technology becomes the core engine for Business the Board needs to review their understanding of the Risks posed by your team members.

It is clear today that Snowden though a low ranking officer in the NSA he was able to snoop and access classified data by using free ware tools.  When someone does the same to your organizations digital assets it will have grave repercussions on your business and could make it bankrupt. 

In one organization a few employees were monitoring email and were aware of management decisions and thoughts exchanged on email by the leadership of  including internal matters relating to finance, human resources and other confidential information. The leadership was clueless about the risk posed to the organization by this simple act of leakage of email. 

Who is the Snowden in this turbaned Group !

Most Boards and leadership teams allow the IT team to sit in an ivory tower little understanding their activities, they consider the IT team as a set of elves they need to deal with to give their wish list and it would be done.  Most leadership teams are happy with their collaboration tools and operational applications working for them, most often the CFO is the leader who interacts with the IT team and in many companies is also head of IT.  The CFO is most times is least qualified to understand the technology risks and the exposure of the organization from its IT team.

With cloud computing and large bandwidths large tranches of information can be moved from your organizations digital environment. 

In a world where digital tools are essential for business, it is time that the leadership and board woke up to the risk and realities of having  a Snowden clone in your team. This calls for introspection in hiring and also managing their teams and also a better understanding of information management. 

You can begin by sanitizing the entire team including outsourced resources, but you must also be vigorous and objective with your own  IT team.  Though there may objections to this exercise it is essential for the well being of your organizations digital assets to be protected and secured. 

How do you begin, the first step in this process is educate the Leadership Team and the Board on the need for weeding out Snowden's in your organization. This could be led by the Chief Risk Officer of the organization assisted by Human Resources Department. If you do not have the expertise you can take the help of experts who can help you with this activity. 

All the best in weeding out the Snowden in your organization.