OPERATIONAL SECURITY OF UBIQUITOUS INFORMATION - Cyberwar-Netwar: Security in the Information Age - page 87

We now consider the major trends of technology use in organizations and then develop
a framework to adapt the importance of the actual information infrastructure to its real
security management needs.

3. BASE TECHNOLOGY IMPACT IN INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

The technology that caused, during the past century, major changes in organizational
structures operation and management, is the telephone. It is simply not possible to
imagine today's organizations without it. The telephone represents voice communication
over a fixed technological structure. Its impact on all organizational issues has been
tremendous and is already well understood.
Computer and computer systems have also been another reason for organizations to
evolve during the past four to five decades. Because computers and computer systems
continue to accelerate their performance and capabilities, organizational behaviour and
strategy have to benefit from the new technological possibilities or face the threat of
competition. Year by year, enterprise operations rely more on computers, the role of
which depends more and more on reliability, resilience and security. Besides, enterprises
also understand that apart from the simple operational activities, decision-making can
also evolve by the use of computers, thus increasing their management effectiveness.
But the real power of computers only showed itself when organizations linked their
capabilities with internal communication. Because time matters, business processes really
changed managers' perceptions on how to recreate enterprises and other organizations.
During the 1980's processes represented a strategic weapon in the hands of total quality
management 3 . In the next decade, managers learned, quite painfully, how to reinvent the
enterprise, and all three of Anthony's levels 1 , with business process re-engineering 4 .
During the last few years, the process concept evolved once again towards real-time
support, profoundly affecting both operations, business models and, hence, strategy. All
this is being accomplished by the incredible power of the Internet.
Internet technology pushed organizational internal communications forward, with real-
time processes on intranets. Today's integrated real-time operations are a reality, not only
because it is possible, but because the market demanded it. External communications,
being standard and widely used and available, force the organizations' responsiveness in
real-time. If the tactical impact of the Internet, which represents a huge evolution in
internal data communications, is already well understood, market evolution and growth is
still a question mark, as proved by the recent Internet bubble burst that still misleads
managers and strategists. Here again, security managers have to follow the new
information management paradigm.

4. THE PROMISE OF MOBILITY

The past decade was fruitful in the new and innovative information and
communication technology. Alongside computers and the Internet, voice
communications experienced a major change in usefulness by providing a new
infrastructure for mobile, thus ubiquitous, access. Voice ubiquity has had a major impact
both on people and organizations.