Why does an IT professional go paranoid?
By siliconindia   |   Monday, 23 August 2010, 22:40 IST   |    5 Comments
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Why does an IT professional go paranoid?
Bangalore: IT professionals are often known to get paranoid with their worklife. Now with the advent and demand of newer technology each day and the growing reliance of every business on their ICT, IT professionals have got more work to do. Here are some five reasons that get IT professionals paranoid, reports Dan Tynan of InfoWorld. Failure of data center: To keep the datacenter running continuously without any snags is one of the toughest tasks, IT professionals have to face. If the data center goes down, it can take the entire organization to a loss. "Simply keeping the data center running (and armed to the teeth) isn't enough. IT managers are also under constant pressure to reduce data center costs", says Gary Marks, VP for Raritan. Gadget fever will infect your network: Devices containing sensitive data can be lost, stolen, or compromised by malware. As with infected PCs or laptops, the entire network can be at risk. "Absolutely no data should ever sit unprotected on a mobile device," says Dan Zeck, CTO for Antenna Software, a mobile enterprise solutions vendor. "A minimum of two-factor authentication with a timeout to reset the log-in should be required for any mobile-based application. This would help mitigate the issue of stealing data sitting on any device", Zeck added. The cloud will obscure the mountains behind it: Cloud computing can dramatically reduce capital expenditures and allow IT to outsource bread-and-butter internal ops so that internal expertise can be applied to innovative and differentiating projects. "A good cloud computing implementation can make you a hero," says Bender's Archibald. "A bad cloud computing implementation or strategy can go horribly wrong and cost a company hundreds of millions of dollars." Data will leak from your network unseen: "Most IT folks are not focused on this stuff," says Bob Houghton, CEO of Redemtech. "They just go down a list and tick things off without scrutinizing the results. People tell you they're doing everything the right way, but the actual outcomes are never audited and reviewed for effectiveness." Everyone in IT knows sensitive information on company hard drives and network storage devices must be secured. But where the real IT paranoia lies is with all the other places data might be lurking. Management will never understand your value: No matter how long the IT professionals work, at the end if something goes wrong they have no excuse for it. "If IT people want to improve their visibility and their credibility, they need to take it upon themselves to step up and connect with the business side through relationships and communication. It's never going to happen any other way", says Patty Azzarello, CEO of Azzarello Group.