I asked several leaders, whose opinions I greatly respect, to share their thoughts on 2010’s opportunities and challenges. Here is what they shared with us:

Regulatory:

“With the growth of the global economy, Universities are increasing their International student/researcher population. With this growth come additional challenges for federal law enforcement agencies’ central intelligence workload. Additionally, higher education organizations must balance the duty to assist in ensuring the highest level of Homeland Security and protecting the rights of their faculty, staff and students. The increased responsibility of managing the Homeland Security technology requirements and the costs associated with securing ‘Select Agent Research Labs’ is a critical challenge that requires new skills and resources.”
 

Business Leadership:

“As always, being pro-active is what keeps you ahead in this game. Sharpening up your business continuity & crisis plans should always be part of your first quarter goals. Whether the challenge is brought on by terrorism, natural disasters, etc, your continuity plans are designed to maintain stability within your organization. The last thing you want to happen as a security executive is to be caught in a situation with an outdated plan.
 

Cybercrime:

“2010 will be the year that cyber security really gets the enterprise focus it deserves. To date, regulatory compliance regarding data security has firms implementing minimum acceptable standards for cyber security. Moving forward, a greater emphasis will be placed on the end-to-end security of supply chains to protect both intellectual property breeches and ensure brand integrity against product component fraud and piracy concerns. A subset of this issue will be the emergence of privacy concerns for both employees and partners, as critical information becomes more mobile and access priorities are monitored much more closely.”

Dan Dunkel, president, New Era Associates

 

Balancing Aggressive Corporate Survival Tactics with Innovative Security Measures:

Identify opportunity in adversity and capitalize. This corporate strategy is essential to survive, and even thrive, through the downturn.  Collectively, it will be a key ingredient in stimulating the global economy’s re-emergence.  This tactic simultaneously stretches global corporations in ways that elevate risk profiles. Despite CSO budgets having been fractionalized through belt tightening, protecting people and advancing corporate resilience have never been more essential.  Doing so in the 2010 economic environment will challenge CSO creativity and innovation as never before.  Understanding the threat and being prepared for looming crises remains our only option.

John Imhoff, Director

Office of Firm Security, Ernst and Young

2009 Security 500 Conference

The 3rd Annual Security 500 Conference was our best yet with more than 100 attendees and a dynamic day of industry leaders speaking, joining panels and creating a great networking opportunity.
Francis D’Addario was this year’s Keynote presenter. His presentation, Not a Moment to Lose…Influencing Global Security One Community at a Time, was right on target for our audience and gave the day a great start. D’Addario, as you may know, is the former global protection strategist for Starbucks Coffee and current faculty member at the Security Executive Council.