Consumerization of enterprises: A Security Conundrum

Google Tech Talks July, 31 2008 ABSTRACT Consumerization of enterprises: A Security Conundrum No one can argue that consumerization is happening within today's enterprises. This is the first time in the computing history that consumer technologies are driving innovation and technology adoption, rather than taking a back seat to enterprise and military technologies. Consumer technologies bring a rich, interactive user experience, which is a powerful draw for workplace adoption. Businesses are also finding compelling use of consumer technologies to foster innovative and new B2C and B2B markets. Today, 25% of all organizations have an enterprise priority to implement Web 2.0 technologies in 2008. But on a larger scale, the use of consumer technologies in enterprises remains spotty and limited. One of the biggest challenges is security and the level of management control to which enterprises are accustomed. This talk presents a vision of full consumerization of enterprises, with ubiquitous adoption of consumer technologies and a seamless experience between consumer and enterprise apps. We'll investigate security implications of such a vision, and more specifically, technological advances that would be needed to support such a vision. The author intends this to be an interactive discussion rather than a presentation and is seeking audience members' feedback to the "full consumerization" vision. Speaker: Dr. Chenxi Wang Dr. Chenxi Wang is a principal analyst with Forrester. She leads Forrester's research in areas including content security, application security, threats and vulnerability management, and software security. Chenxi brings to Forrester years of sophisticated research experience; her previous experience includes a five-year stint as an associate research professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where she published many research papers on network security and distributed systems. Previously, Chenxi served as the chief scientist for KSR, a managed security service startup in the San Francisco bay area. Chenxi also serves as an investigative forensics expert for the Federal Trade Commission. She is the recipient of a Critical Infrastructure Protection Fellowship from the Army Research Office and the Samuel Alexander Fellowship of ACM for outstanding Ph.D. thesis research.