Disruption is everywhere. The S&P 500, normally a bastion of stability, experienced an unprecedented 50 percent churn rate in just the past 15 years. In 1999, General Electric and Coca-Cola were at the top of the list. Today it’s Apple and Google. And look at a company like Uber, which owns no cars and predominantly exists digitally in the cloud. It has a market cap larger than either Ford or GM, which are both still producing physical products. It’s estimated that in the next 10 years, the S&P 500 churn could grow even more, to as high as 75 percent. You can bet that organizations that have successfully implemented digital transformation will be leading the new charge.
In today’s environment, success requires companies to approach every engagement as part of an overarching strategy of executing policies and practices in a digital world. And, as with any transformation, the change brought about by it – and which follows in its wake – can be empowering or destructive. Digital transformation is filled with equal parts danger and opportunity.
Cleverism.com defines digital transformation as the use of digital technology in every aspect of human society and living. They see digital transformation as the third step of a long process, coming after achieving digital competence and then becoming fully digital literate. It’s a good definition as one might expect from a site with ‘clever’ in its name, but what does it mean for IT security and technology as a whole?
Password Manager and DX
Digital Transformations means that organizations need to be prepared to conduct IT security in an environment where everything carries an online component, everything is interconnected or soon will be, and everything is always on. Interactions with clients, customers and even competitors can occur at any time, in almost any way, and in great numbers. And at the heart of that fact is the need to provide simple access to “always-on” environments without compromising security or data.
Single Sign-On technologies fill this need in three major ways:
- Condensing access to back-end systems and disparate networks vital to providing services and products around the clock into one single point of entry.
- Providing an easy and quick way to add new systems, and secure access to new networks.
- Flexing with the needs and demands of a varying customer base that may need access to different networks at different times of the day and at vastly different, global locations.
The takeaway is that digital transformation is already changing the fabric of our industrial base, our companies and our society in radical ways. The IT security departments that realize this first will have the best chance of positioning their organizations not only to maintain their footing, but also to improve their customer’s satisfaction and grow their base as a result of this transformation.
This Blog was brought to you by Hypersocket and its CEO, Lee David Painter. With over 20 years of industry experience as a pioneer in IT Security, Lee developed the world’s first OpenSource browser-based SSL VPN (SSL-Explorer). Today Lee runs Hypersocket, a leader in virtual private network technology.
