There is a parallel between Risk Management and the struggle that a lot of organizations go through with disaster recovery. If Senior Management cannot, will not or is incapable of providing guidance about what is critical, then someone else is left in the position of creating a plan that typically ends up being more expensive than it needs to be. Sensitive data has the same issues. If we do not clearly define what is sensitive and what is not, an organization is left in the position of trying to guard everything.

Small Businesses and usually Medium sized businesses typically have problems dealing with their information technology. It is not uncommon to see a small business not have an employee dedicated to Information Technology (IT) and when they do, that person usually does not have time to pay attention to security or its impact on business. Cloud services promise a lot if there is not a great need for flexibility, but it is not a substitute for employee education.

Sleepless nights, overwhelming pressure from the regulations and fear of audits keep us awake at night and weigh down our technology staff. The decision to address these challenges is a key management issue, but the burden of delivery typically falls on our technology staff.

In comparison, life seemed so simple a few years ago. We just had to worry about the lights staying on at the stroke of midnight when the century changed. Now we have empowered our employees with modern technology and the overhead and complexity just seem to negate the benefits at times.

We know we need technology to compete, but our staff cannot keep up. We have a limited budget. How do we even know if we are doing the right things, addressing the highest priority challenges first, to protect our business, employees, customers and suppliers? Our systems are supposed to be safe and compliant one day and the next day we are running around patching systems.

We just about get our hands around one challenge and some breach or other vulnerability gets publicized and we are off and running again. It never seems to end. We feel lost and not in control like we would like to be.