In today's age of Web 2.0 and cloud computing, security can actually be a positive enabler for driving business performance. To achieve this objective, enterprises can benefit from having a corporate-wide strategy, or a "security blueprint," that allows the enterprise to be open for business and provides a trusted environment.
On the other side of the coin, the rapid growth in communications technology has been accompanied by a similarly swift increase in security threats, cybercrime and the introduction of correlated security regulations.
According to an Alcatel-Lucent white paper, "Created the Trusted, Dynamic Enterprise," early in 2009 industry experts presenting to the U.S. Senate committee hearing on improving cyber security estimated profits from the cybercrime economy totaled close to $1 trillion - more than the cash generated by drug crime. This was later reinforced in a report by Symantec in April 2009 that noted there was a 265 percent increase in malicious code threats in 2008 compared to 2007.
However, adopting what the company calls a "trusted dynamic enterprise" philosophy, companies can position themselves to leverage the Internet to conduct day-to-day business while ensuring enterprise security.
"We believe our philosophy around security is to really help our customers focus on leveraging new collaborative business models such as the cloud and Web 2.0 and it's really about managing risks, controlling data and controlling costs and understanding how to use security as a positive business enabler...rather than a detractor," said Cliff Grossner of security solutions marketing at Alcatel-Lucent, in a recent interview with TMCnet.
Collaborative security in terms of creating innovative enterprise security solutions results in a trusted dynamic enterprise - trusted because enterprises provide the trusted environment for their employees to do their work, for their business partners who aren't being compromised, and trusted by their own customers because Alcatel-Lucent's customers are able to protect their data.
Further, Alcatel-Lucent's brand of security is more about managing security from the network. If you manage it from the end point, you will always get a fragmented view of the current security status of the enterprise.
