Oracle CIO: Every Enterprise Has the Security it Deserves

“Every Enterprise has the security it deserves,” says Oracle Chief Information Officer Mark Sunday. “It begins at the very top. It truly begins with the board, CEO, and the Executive Committee to set the culture and to ensure that the people, process, technology, and the governance processes are in place to ensure the security of customers, companies, and employees information.”

Mark Sunday, CIO of Oracle, discussed the increasing need for enterprises to take a holistic, comprehensive, and automated approach towards information security in an interview with Michael Krigsman of CXOTALK:

Security is Increasingly a Big Part of the Discussion

It’s really been interesting to see the dramatic change in the awareness around security. Quite frankly, the threats have gotten much greater. Security is increasingly a big part of the discussion. If I look at the one area that my organization has increased year on year on year, it’s what we’re investing in security. We’re the norm in that. We’re not the exception. Then also the increased sophistication of the threats, the increased sophistication of the tooling, and so forth required, is putting more and more focus on this. It really becomes job one.

I think that boards have now become aware and that they are accountable to assure that the people, the processes, the technology, that all the steps that one needs to do in order to ensure the integrity, confidentially, privacy, and security, of not only a customer’s data, the company’s data, but in fact the employees data as well.

Security is Not Just the Role of the CIO

Security is getting its place at the table, whether it’s within the IT organizations, at the corporate level, or at the board level. Security has always been something that’s been out there, something that we’ve had to take into account, but more recently there have certainly been more high profile incidents that have highlighted just what the impact of security can have. But also it’s been highlighted that you need to have the focus that security is not just the role of the CIO, not just the role of the CISO, but it’s everyone’s responsibility.

It begins with making people aware of what they need to do, what the threats and the vulnerabilities are, and what their role is in defending against that. Security needs to be built into every line of code we write, every configuration we enable, every computer that we manage the configuration asset the patching level on and the updates on. It affects essentially most roles within the organization.

Every Enterprise Has the Security it Deserves

Just given the scale, size, complexity, and the opportunity for human error, you really need to take a holistic, comprehensive, and automated approach towards how you deal with configuration management, change management, and vulnerability management. All of these are key aspects. It’s very difficult if it’s done you know manually. You have to look at a comprehensive program that allows you to simplify, standardize, centralize, and automate all the aspects of how you deal with those things that you know could expose your company to security and privacy concerns.

Every Enterprise has the security it deserves. It begins at the very top. It truly begins with the board, CEO, the Executive Committee, to set the culture and to ensure that the people, process, technology, and the governance processes are in place to ensure the security of customers, companies, and employees information.