Risk Management

Ideas and strategies to make risk management more effective.

ERM Practice: Trying to Catch Up with the Theory

Robert Charette | Dec 18, 2012 No Responses

Dec 182012

Former Yankee baseball player Yogi Berra, known for his insightful malapropisms, once said, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.” This would be an apt description of the current state of enterprise risk management (ERM). In theory, ERM is useful in addressing the question, “What is the best use of corporate resources to create or protect the most value for the enterprise?” Yet in practice — except for a few exceptions like that of the successful avionics firm Rockwell Collins – it has fallen woefully short of meeting this objective. Over the past decade-plus, organizations have found ERM extremely difficult and costly to implement, with many early ERM adopters …

Agility, the Personal Cloud, and Complex Analytics on the Horizon

Brian Dooley | Dec 15, 2012 No Responses

Dec 152012

Agility, the Personal Cloud, and Complex Analytics on the Horizon

Predictions are always difficult in interesting times, because tomorrow’s concepts depend upon activity which has not yet occurred. We expected flying cars; we are getting autonomous cars. In the 1950s, the computer revolution, robotics, GPS, and today’s traffic patterns would have been difficult to envision. Today, we are seeing rapid evolution across Information and Communications Technology, affecting every component and every meme. But we can see the direction that some areas of recent concentration are likely to take. Concepts of Agility will continue to evolve, moving beyond specific processes such as Scrum toward more comprehensive programs capable of incorporating a wider variety of projects, under more conditions and supporting greater integration with governance. This can …

The New Darlings of the Globe

Carl Pritchard | Nov 30, 2012 No Responses

Nov 302012

It’s not going to be a pretty year ahead, unless you’re in the “doom and gloom” business. As one of the “risk guys,” I’m in a sweet spot for the year ahead, but I don’t think I have a lot of company. I believe a lot of businesses are going to retrench even more deeply, hoarding capital and waiting for some semblance of stability in terms of business regulation. I don’t believe that stability will be forthcoming, which means that the money that has been holed up for several years now will begin to find its way off shore. This makes for an interesting year ahead for the folks outside the States and outside the …

Identity Management in Technology-Assisted Educational Systems

John Tibbetts | Jul 17, 2012 1 Response

Jul 172012

On that long list of venerable institutions primed for a high-tech overhaul, higher education is near the top. Its shortcomings are much discussed: universities are expensive, inaccessible, inflexible, and out of touch with the needs of students and the world economy. A diploma that demands four (or more) years on campus, long lectures, fend-for-yourself homework, and massive final exams seems as much a relic of the 19th century as of the 20th. Educating the millions of people that our future depends on will require not just a productivity boost but something fundamentally different. These days “something fundamentally different” usually involves the Internet. Decades of desultory experiments with “computer-aided education” have now yielded exciting, scalable, measurably …

Mr. Cellophane: Do Risk Managers Lack Influence?

Scott Stribrny | Jul 21, 2011 6 Responses

Jul 212011

Sunday evening my wife and I took in the musical “Chicago,” a sensational tale of sin, corruption and all that jazz, set in prohibition era Chicago, my hometown. The story is a sizzling satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the “celebrity criminal.” Listening to the lyrics sung by the hapless character Amos, I suspected that even the most confident of us might empathize with him as he sings ‘Mr. Cellophane’: “If someone stood up in a crowd And raised his voice up way out loud And waved his arm and shook his leg You’d notice him If someone in the movie show Yelled “Fire in the second row …

What’s the Role of Agentless within IT Operations?

Bill Keyworth | May 19, 2011 2 Responses

May 192011

We seem to invest heavily in IT service management solutions that are highly dependent upon agent technologies for the visibility needed to “drive” (i.e. access, secure, manage and control) the desktops, laptops and servers within our IT infrastructure. Are these applications so compelling that we trust traditional agent-based management models which are inherently vulnerable to the same risks as the endpoints they manage? Is it wisdom to introduce the resultant IT operational handicaps of being unable to identify over 15-20% of our infrastructure’s endpoints1 due to issues of hidden, missing, outdated, or misconfigured agents required for anti-virus, inventory and patches? Given the significance of the functionality of these mission critical IT management and security applications, …

Avoiding the IT Reorganization Sine Wave

Jerry Grochow | Apr 19, 2011 No Responses

Apr 192011

Large, complex organizations regularly struggle with the pros and cons on each side of the centralization/ decentralization argument — and then they reorganize, usually to the opposite extreme. If you are looking at decentralization, the argument is that business unit executives need IT resources under their direct control to better achieve their business goals. Under this approach, the organization will typically maintain a small central IT group with limited responsibility, perhaps related to architecture and standards. If looking to centralize control, the argument is that this is the only way to ensure economic efficiency, and it may be absolute. These arguments have merit, but not absolutely, in either case. Both extremes create an environment for …

Surviving a Cyberattack: From Phishing to Cyberwar

Christine Generali | Feb 17, 2011 No Responses

Feb 172011

Some argue that a cyber-Armageddon — or a “digital Pearl Harbor” — may be just around the corner, while others counter that while cybersecurity needs to be taken seriously, the overall cyberthreat and its consequences are vastly overblown and are merely a convenient excuse to sell over-priced security software and consulting. The May 2011 Cutter IT Journal will try to separate the wheat from the chaff as pertains to security threats from current and potential cyberweapons. Proposals of interest are due 2 March 2011. To respond, please visit http://www.cutter.com/content-and-analysis/journals-and-reports/cutter-it-journal/callforpapers02.html

Five New Risk Quotients

Stephen Andriole | Jan 11, 2011 1 Response

Jan 112011

Risk management is a formal process owned by senior executives responsible for keeping everyone safe and sound day and night. They report to internal and external audit committees or, actually, prefer to avoid any and all interaction with audit folks since even a casual discussion with auditors can result in a boatload of work for entire teams of already overworked professionals. So what do they audit and how is risk assessed? Most risks are the standard fare. If the audit tells you that your disaster recovery plans are inadequate, then the company will be placed at risk. If your wireless networks are insecure, then the risk bells will go off. If your change-control processes are …

Business Technology Strategies for the Road Forward

Anne Mullaney | Oct 20, 2010 No Responses

Oct 202010

Here at Cutter HQ, as we fondly call it, we’re in full Summit mode: printing badges, packing boxes, tweaking the final menus – getting all the behind-the-scenes stuff done. But that’s certainly not the exciting stuff! What is exciting is the program. As always (this is the 14th Summit we’ve held here in the Boston area), there’s nothing theoretical about the program or sessions. It’s all about creating and discovering business-technology strategies that pave the way for success. And since there are no vendor sponsors, there are no pitches, subtle or otherwise, about silver bullet-type solutions. Here’s a peek at Monday’s sessions: We’re addressing cloud computing. Lou Mazzucchelli’s tackling this topic. If you’ve ever heard …

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Risk Management

ERM Practice: Trying to Catch Up with the Theory

The New Darlings of the Globe

Identity Management in Technology-Assisted Educational Systems

Mr. Cellophane: Do Risk Managers Lack Influence?

What’s the Role of Agentless within IT Operations?

Avoiding the IT Reorganization Sine Wave

Surviving a Cyberattack: From Phishing to Cyberwar

Five New Risk Quotients

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