At some point we all have to make decisions about who our friends are and how we are going to deal with the rest of the world. OK it’s mostly trial and error to begin with, and your true friends never forget your errors, but sooner rather than later you get to know that it is worth investing in and spending time with people who;
- cope with the changes in your lifestyle,
- are not needy and,
- introduce you to other interesting people or things.
Oddly even grown men in the C suite forget all of this when they are looking for a partner for their business. They revert to their twenty-year-old self, obsessed with gizmos and features, and believe that they can solve all of their issues by buying one ginormous solution that does everything and will improve their life. The sort of guy that finds a great toaster but the salesman sells them a toaster integrated with a coffee machine and a trouser press, and then they can’t understand why it just doesn’t work. Great toast and lousy coffee are not a good start to the day.
So what should you be looking for;
- It’s got to be the best-of-breed product; for example, second rate data discovery is as bad as no data discovery and as your requirements change you need to be able to change one of your product choices as other better tools become available, and not be stuck with an unwieldy platform
- Choose solutions that don’t force you to use specific tools which are just adequate but are unlikely to meet your changing needs. There are some good tools on the market that allow you to pick “your friends” and all operate together. Microsoft’s Azure Information Protection (AIP) is opening up so you can have best-of-breed data classification with the functionality that you need and still drive their RMS, as well as integrating with your choice of other best-of-breed vendors in areas such as DLP, encryption and behavioural analytics. Your User community is your major security risk and your biggest opportunity. Give them intuitive tools that empower them and they will delight you. Treat them like the enemy with one-size-fits-all solutions with the associated dreaded false positives, and you will find them distinctly unfriendly
If you look closely at your best friends they are not all the same and none of them fulfil all your needs but you all have a common goal.
To find out more about why Boldon James can be your perfect security partner, watch our new video featuring Kevin here.