As most assets of an organization are available on servers, the external threat is imminent, and one must be prepared for it. An appropriate lineup of application security will ensure that an organization’s applications stay protected with software, hardware, and procedural methods to protect applications from external threats.
Often a neglected concept in software design, security is now an issue of concern for several organizations as networks are now incredibly easy to hack into and access thereby exposing the applications to serious threats. However, with security measures that scan all your applications and possesses a thorough security routine that monitors and restricts attempts from unauthorized officials that use code to alter access to the organization’s most secure applications featuring sensitive data.
An impenetrable application security, a leading contributor in the assessment of an organization’s brand perception, is capable of storing a large amount of sensitive data on the cloud storage using private servers and other software.
Aftermath of an improper application security: Recently, Beth Jacob, CIO of Target Stores for over seven years resigned. The reason behind his unusual resignation was a leak of private data of over 70 million of Target’s customers. As a result, the losses suffered by Target were massive excluding the legal remunerations. Target’s CEO Gregg Steinhafel later announced their plans to hire a more experienced CIO and make amends for their losses by completely overhauling their information security network. This is just another example of many scenarios wherein the lack of application security has cost organizations their dignity and negligent associates their jobs. The cost incurred by an organization is staggering and the sole person responsible for the mess is the CEO. Even a single hit by the IT security department would put the CEO in a difficult position.
What it could cost: The CEO’s and CIO’s are now required to qualify their abilities to organizations, not just in their managerial skills, but also in their ability to minimize risks, monitor application security protocols, and be perseverant. Another major effect of application security is in the cost to the company. Earlier, using advanced security measures and reliability were a part of the bonus package under variable income. However, with external threats imminent a CIO’s primary salary plan includes the requirement of maintenance of a solid security protocol. Because of this paradigm shift in policies, the CIO could be regarded as the head of application security as online external threats continue to overwhelm organizational firewall servers. Just like the security guards that monitor an organization’s premises for people that a surveillance would miss, a CIO or an information security manager would be responsible for restricting prevalent threats to an organization’s data.
Other cases of irregular application security:
- Gov
- Airline ticketing systems
- Knight Capital Trading
Failure to follow the protocol would not only lead to a massive loss for the organization, but also to the employee as it directly affects the salary premium and more importantly, could cost the CIO their job.
