Designing with Intent: A Roundtable Episode with Acxiom’s Beth-Anne Bygum and Target State Consulting’s Anthony McMahon

Security is big business, but has the role of securing networks and employees bloated to the point that businesses cannot properly protect themselves? Or is the speed of business moving too fast to care? On a roundtable episode with Beth-Anne Bygum, CISO at Acxiom and Anthony McMahon, CIO/CTO and Principle Consultant for Target State Consultants, the two discussed a host of topics, including if technology was moving too quickly for security measures to matter.

“We have to move at the speed of the business anymore because the ability to access, purchase, integrate, buy, share, is extremely fluid,” Bygum said. “It means one, we have to constantly press ourselves to be more efficient. Two, we have to constantly ask ourselves: is our defense fabric, the set of tools we use, even keeping pace with the tools my development teams are using?” 

On this episode of IT Visionaries, our security series continues as Beth-Anne and Anthony take a look at why implementing proper security hygiene practices remains crucial to ensure better overall security. The two also touch on why security officials are having to constantly defend against attackers at the code level and why that problem can be solved by architects designing with security in mind. Enjoy.

Main Takeaways

• Practicing Good (Security) Hygiene: Until application developers start designing with security in mind, a best practice is to consistently be measuring the health and cleanliness of your current security measures. There are some downsides, like oversecuring and unwanted steps in some processes, but it remains the one of the only ways to properly protect a company and its employees.
• Feeling the Pressure: With the pace of business moving more quickly than ever, vendors are first to roll out new apps and services without thinking about security. This means that security teams are not able to provide proper risk assessments on these services prior to their installation and that leaves people at risk.
• Privacy by Design: The only way to avoid employees and businesses from feeling “oversecure” is for vendors to begin designing their applications with security in mind from the beginning and not as an afterthought.

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