Where have my network boundaries gone?
In the good old days, it was all much simpler and most corporate
networks had limited or no external connections. I can recall from
about that time my first "corporate" contact with the internet via
a graduate trainee's dial-up account that his university had not
got round to cancelling.
Now those simple days are long gone. Along came e-mail, then
internet access - carefully controlled at first (that did not last
long) - and now we have massive interconnection between everything.
The idea of "my network" and "your network" is effectively
obsolete.
So the logical boundary has gone, and along with it the physical
- users might be safe and snug within your corporate buildings, but
more likely at home, on the move, and, certainly in NCH's case,
working from someone else's premises entirely.
The time boundaries have gone as well - increasingly people
expect to be able to work when they want, mixing business and
leisure, and making a mockery of the nine-to-five culture.
So the logical, physical and time boundaries have gone, and they
are not even using our kit - home PCs, partner's PCs, the fancy
mobile they got off the nice man down the market - all of the ways
we ensured our networks were manageable and information secure have
been eroded.
Even the information boundary is going - integration and sharing
with customers - mash-ups are blending "our" information with
internet sources, staff pumping corporate information onto the
internet with the best intentions (have you tried googling your
e-mail domain name recently?) and all that before we get to
USB drives capable of holding several major corporate databases
at once.
So what are we left with that is actually within our control any
more? Providing the applications and systems? Well, no actually -
e-mail and office applications from Google, and software as a
service starting to take off generally. Even the tin is going -
with
virtualisation where we host our computing, and who owns the
physical stuff, is becoming vastly more flexible.
So, welcome to the boundary less corporate network.
How do we cope? Batten down the hatches, block the USB ports and
man the barricades? I think this approach is doomed to failure as
business needs and user demand overwhelms it.
First, we need help. All of this depends on the internet, a
uniquely lawless place. Nationally, we need effective (i.e. funded)
policing for a start, not the low key under funded messing around
we have seen so far. An effective international legal framework for
the internet would be nice, but is probably well beyond the
capability of our politicians. At home our laws, particularly on
personal data, need to catch up with the technology, without
killing the creativity and flare the internet has unleashed.
Second, suppliers need to catch up with the market. Most
licensing models still assume a clear network boundary and fixed
hardware (try working out the licensing for an application running
in a virtual machine accessed via
Citrix over the internet, for instance). Although this is a
great advert for open source, it shows many suppliers have not yet
understood the environment they have created.
Third, this is a cultural change as much as technological. We
need to rethink how we understand and measure work - if Sue worked
on a report at 2am for a deadline, do we really mind her ordering
shopping from Tescos at 11am? The technical solutions we have put
in to separate work and 'leisure' look increasingly meaningless in
the boundary less network.
Fourth, information has value, as
HMRC has neatly reminded us. The loss of boundaries makes
understanding what we should protect, what is ok to share, and what
from whom we can trust externally both difficult and vital. At
present most of us do not know what information we hold, and
certainly cannot find it. Most organisations have hardly started to
understand and manage in this area.
Finally, while current technologies are rapidly making computing
and communications commodities, information itself - the reason we
are doing all this - remains stubbornly bespoke. XML,
SOA and
Web 2.0 are starting to erode this barrier, but we have a long
way to go.
Brychan Watkins is head of IS at children's charity
NCH.