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Security Ambassadors

By Deborah Radcliff

October 1, 2001 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - A few years ago, American Family Mutual Insurance Co. ran its IT operations like most other companies do: Business units would hand down an order for a new program or functionality, and IT would build it.

And as in most large organizations, a security manager would attempt to advise developers on vulnerable points and security requirements.

But that approach stretched the lone security manager too thin, says Mike Kleckner, who held that position at American Family three years ago.

So Winnie Schumann, director of enterprise technology strategies at the Madison, Wis.-based company, decided to put security controls into the hands of the systems specialists who knew their technology the best. Then, she handed the choices of individual security controls to the business units that owned the data in question.

Security Primer

When undertaking a new development project, American Family enables the business unit project managers to set security requirements themselves. A key element is a template developed by the company's two IT security advisers that explains key terms:

Authentication:
Who are you?

Authorization:
What can you do?

Confidentiality and reliability:
Privacy and dependability

Monitoring and tracking:
What did you do?

Backup and recovery:
Rebuilding the system

Physical security:
Locking others out

Change management:
Protecting the production process

Legal requirements:
What the law expects

Training and awareness:
What you need to know

Contingency planning:
What if?

Program paybacks:

Every major business unit is already represented by the corporate security board.

Business participation in the company's security intranet pages is strong.

The corporate compliance officer even co-developed the IT security policies with Winnie Schumann, director of enterprise technology strategies.

All that was needed was someone to decipher the business needs into technical solutions and vice versa. This is where Kleckner and Leslie Peckham come in. They are now the company's information security advisers, coordinating security requirements between IT and business units.

"The business person knows the value of their data, and they know what controls are appropriate, so they should be in the driver's seat," Kleckner says.

Their biggest challenge echoes that of all IT departments: bridging the great divide between technology requirements and business requirements. Bridging this gap takes a certain amount of credibility, which comes from the backing of the most senior IT manager - in this case Schumann, who has also gathered support from the most senior company management.

Once they got this backing, Kleckner and Peckham approached this challenge on two fronts - raising IT awareness in the user community and raising business awareness in their IT support departments.

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