IT Executive Roundtable

Registered Attendees Included:

• Brian Keller-Heikkila, MMOABC.COM
• Gary Kho, Liquid Thought
• Gregory Keyes, Affant Communication
• Jim Fitzgerald, OvernightPrints.com
• Michael Hanken, Multiquip
• Ricky Monteilh, Affant Communication
• Roberto Maltez, Mission Beverage Co.
• Ron Prykanowski, SAIC 
• Stephen Laughlin, Academy of Television Arts 

Last night’s ITER Round Table dinner at McCormick & Schmick's in Los Angeles had engaging conversation about the future of IT security from industry thought leaders.

 As one of our attendees, pointed out, the people who attend these dinners are the ones looking to broaden their knowledge and decision-making capacity for their own benefit as well as their professional colleagues.

Our first topic was “It’s three years from now.  Facebook, G-Mail, cloud storage, and other current user-driven, security-risk technologies are ubiquitous. Predict the future. How are we handling it?”

Predictions ran from “generally more of what we’re doing now – trying to close as many holes as possible” to “we will do zero security; every computer in the office will be connected to a high-speed mobile internet connection and all of our server / systems will be protected from our own staff as they are from the rest of the world.” The idea that “we will need to move from being the ‘bouncer’ who doesn’t let things in to the ‘hall-monitor’ who logs all activities but doesn’t necessarily stop them all” raised discussion. Both angles were considered with IT users: IT will continue to be the HR-enforcement wing; or the hall-monitor will give the data to HR who will treat it more as it would have been in the past – an inappropriate magazine in the desk drawer is an HR issue, not an IT issue to keep from happening.

In a second lightning-round topic, we discussed the future of IT users and staff in general and how or whether people should continue to be measured by hours logged or productivity – or if there’s a difference for few, most, or all workers. Our opening example was my niece, who at 16 years old had a 4.2 GPA, played sports, participated in 4H, student government, volunteer work, and other outside activities. They challenge? She sent 18,000 text messages one month. We tend to think we know what distractions from productivity are (Facebook, anyone?) but shouldn’t this example make us question that belief? If every indication is that we have the most productive person available, how should we consider these “productivity killing” activities like text messaging or Facebook? We didn’t solve this problem as a group; but we acknowledged that the next wave of employees and IT users are NOT US.

Your thoughts?