In today’s Indian corporate environment I found the operational strategy is missing. People are not concern and looking a vision what they are interested to achieve. 80 % of the security professional thinks that security is a cost center till the time you are not working in consulting assignment. And if it’s a consulting assignment they are there to make money from clients. Resources are qualified but not committed reason being they think they are not able to make a difference, they are here to do a routine work and present in security arena because it’s highly paying job and much more in demand. What could be impact of such strategy in long term for security professional? Uff !!! If I think in that line it’s quite scary for me. Take an example of recent event of World Bank. Where is personal commitment to justify your role?
Recently I joined a organization as a Security Architect and somehow one of my college commented that it’s just a fancy title to attract a resource because manager, VP, AVP and many more are already out dated. But I like to differ a point this is a new role popping up in the security market because business need a people who can transform the business need in to the security tech jargons. They should understand the business need and accordingly design the solution. But how many of us really mean that and committed to excel is a big question.
Security architect s should understand the strategy of organization (They should not limit themselves to technology only) go in depth what is required by business. Because time and money are the prime factor for any business to survive in market so by understanding the priority architects usually design solutions. In this regards I have gone through some of the good books out of which one in Strategy Maps . So putting some of the points how business has to look from eyes of architect.
Generally strategy maps can be evolved from 4 simple perspective model of balance score card (Balance scorecard is model to evaluate organization metrics and very popular among the accounting professional because it evaluate the intangible assets too). It will also add a level of granularity that improves clarity and focus. The 4 basic pillars of Balance Scorecard drive the business. Finance, Customer, Internal, Learning and Growth.
And definitely strategy is required to balance the contradictory forces like investment in intangible assets for long term revenue growth usually conflict with cost for short-term financial performance. As per the balance scorecard taxonomy classification internal process are broadly divided into 4 clusters and their outcome drives the internal process improvement plans.
a) Operational Management : Give a short term result and easily drive metrics in organizations account
b) Customer Management: Is having a 6-12 Months gestation period to give good or bad outcome.
c) Innovation: Gives output in very long run some time vary between 5-50 Years.
d) Regulatory and Social: Even though take longer than innovation.
So understand your business define the objective as per above 4 cluster and then seek a solution or derive a solution. For example if you are interested to come for solution of compliance metrics calculation software weather you want to develop in house , outsource development or interested to deploy the customizable product or readymade solution is suitable for you. You can easily get the one as per your organization taxonomy.
Usually learning & growth describes the organization or service intangible assets and can be classified in to 3 categories.
· Human Capital: Employees Skill, Talent and Knowledge.
· Information Capital: Databases, Information systems, Networks & Technology Infrastructure.
· Organizational Capital: Culture, leadership, employee’s alignment, knowledge management.
Hope above extract will help you to derive an appropriate solution based on the strategy of your organization.
