Easier Said than Done
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ask yourself, according to the authors. They also give you a nice pat on the back by adding: “If you’re conscientious enough to have picked up this book, you’re the kind of leader who thinks through a solution before implementing it.” Flattery will get you everywhere! Of course, living in France as I do, ‘collaboration’ unfortunately still has painful historical overtones. However, here it is about how to “share information, solve problems and increase productivity without compromising security” by “leveraging the social networking impulse”. It sounds much easier said than done.
“H If we acknowledge that collaboration – by
defi nition – is good and highly desirable, then why has it taken this long for it to become recognized, and what do we actually need to do to implement it? Since, as a journalist acquaintance recently put it, security often gets tarred as the Business Prevention Dept., anything we can do to further the organization’s goals securely is welcomed. This book can point us in that direction. But be aware: “If the collaboration strategy in an enterprise is left up to the technology people, then technology is what you get”, note the authors.“Often, these solutions don’t solve the real problems and as a result they are left unused by the business units for which
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ow could I ever live without this?” That is, basically, what you are expected to
they were developed or purchased.” Being linked together by a network is one thing, using that network in a collaborative style is quite another.
I have always advocated making risk management and internal control activities instinctive (i.e., subconscious reactions, second-nature refl exes), rather than creating bureaucratic overhead. That is also the authors’ intention with their approach, namely to equally improve effectiveness and effi ciency through collaboration. They talk about the balancing act between creative, open, free-fl owing information while maintaining security, aka “the sweet spot”. If we go back to the old adage that knowledge is power, why would people respond to the encouragement to share such knowledge through a collaborative tool? Aren’t they putting themselves out of the picture, letting others take advantage of them? Let’s take Facebook: Managers want it to be secure, fully integrated and an enterprise solution. Yet, there is organizational concern that information needs to remain compartmentalized. So you might still end up with separate tools, leading to athe creation of a Frankenstein – stitched together, but a stilted, non-functioning monster. Of course, there is always the risk that, if you provide nothing, employees will go off and do something on their own, like using Facebook to share proprietary information.
It seems having a service-oriented architecture in place is a prerequisite for integrating a collaboration tool. So collaboration technology is, in fact, not a tool. It is a service, and a horizontal rather than vertical one at that. Beyond the intuitiveness that we are looking for, and if we compare users’ experiences with Facebook, it must become a pleasure – something they automatically associate with human connections. To their merit, the authors acknowledge “that security warrants its own chapter”, where they describe in succinct terms the necessity of authentication, encryption, single sign-on, authorization, mobile device security, insider threats, and – later on – redundancy, failover, and being operating- system agnostic.
If I were to be unkind, I could say that this really all boils down to a 175- page marketing brochure, although collaboration isn’t actually a product. At times the book gives the impression of a kind of crusade for collaboration. After all, why is something apparently so obvious not being taken seriously or applied practically in many instances? Although only Chapter 9 deals specifi cally with cloud computing, maybe ‘Collaboration in the Cloud’ as an alternative title might be more fi tting. Oh, lest I forget, before someone proposes it, please spare me the governance of collaboration!
January/February 2012
Reviewed by: Hugh Penri-Williams
Dynamic Collaboration: How to Share Information, Solve Problems, and Increase Productivity without Compromising Security Ray Schwemmer and Rick Havrilla Third Bridge Press $26.95/£17.50
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