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Career Is Not Over

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DQI Bureau
New Update

It dawned upon me only when I attended a seminar that cyber crime is

menacing, growing rapidly, and would impact perhaps every section of the

society. I was shocked when a speaker informed the audience of CIOs and IT heads

that pornography was one of the biggest illegal activities happening in the

cyberspace. I was ashamed that as a business editor the only evil of cyber crime

I reported was revenue losses to business houses, while pornography, directed at

hooking children of impressionable age, was growing unabated.

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For the uninitiated, dimensions of cyber crime are endless. It includes

piracy of software and ring tones; unauthorized tapping of radio signals or

telephones; hacking or breaking into others networks or computers to steal

information; stalking someone using IT or communications networks; SIM card

cloning; sending or putting up offensive material on a network; sending

unsolicited mails and messages; attacking websites and networks with messages to

bring it down, and so on.

IBRAHIM AHMAD

The enemy will not crash physical gates, climb over boundary walls, and gun down security personnel to come in-but will break through the IT network to get what he wants

Cyber crimes lead to breach of individual privacy, commercial frauds and

revenue losses, terrorism, theft of strategic business data and secrets, theft

of IP, theft of State secrets, to name a few. Not just individuals, but even

organizations and even Governments are sometimes perpetrators of cyber crimes.

And, the sufferers too. The challenge from cyber crime, therefore, is not just

before the IT industry. The society as a whole will have to gear up to handle

all sorts of new ways these criminals will find to attack with.

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The seminar on cyber crime threw up another interesting observation. What

surprised me was that while our Indian CIOs seem to know a lot about storage,

utility computing, networking, ERP, and network security, their awareness about

the various facets of cyber crime was far less than adequate. That so many types

of cyber crimes existed came as a bit of surprise to them too.

A CIO not fully aware of the possible threats from IT and telecom deployments

in the organization can prove to be very costly.

I will not be surprised if in the future we see a CIO also doubling up as

Chief Vigilance Officer, therefore not just running the IT and network

infrastructure, but also ensuring that it is not breached and used to the

disadvantage of the organization. The enemy will not crash physical gates, climb

over boundary walls, and gun down security personnel to come in-but will break

through the IT network to get what he wants.

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The impact of cyber crime can be and will be devastating for organizations.

Not only will trade secrets and business strategies get stolen, but the CEOs

could get arrested, and the reputation of well known companies could get hit.

Nobody would like to do business with an organization that does not have safe

networks.

No wonder leading enterprise users the world over have taken up security as a

major initiative. Several standards and best practices on security regulations

have been formed, and millions of dollars are being spent on getting those

standards. To ensure that these security standards are across the entire chain,

and not just with one partner, many of these organizations are refusing to

partner with companies which do not have those security practices in place.

Who said the CIO's career is over? In fact, life is going to get more

challenging and difficult for him. Besides running the MIS shop, he has to be

the watch-guard too. He needs to keep himself abreast of not just the new

technologies, but also all the new crimes that a cyber criminal can think of.

And, just when, after the ISO 9000 and its likes, he thought he was done with,

he will now go mad figuring out how to get certifications which certify that the

company's IT processes and networks are safe.

The author is Editor of Dataquest IBRAHIM

AHMAD

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