Secure Enterprise 2.0 Blog

When commanding the ship, you’ve got to find the right balance between giving out orders and directing the crew on the one hand, and trusting every person on the ship to do their job and then some on the other hand. The first part comes naturally, since the responsibility for the ship’s performance lies eventually with you. It is the second part that is hard - you’ve got to let go of the controls and provide your team with leeway for creativity and yes, even make mistakes.

At the office, the balancing act is much of the same – you’ve got to lead your organization forward, while conceding responsibilities to your subordinates. So when you first hear of a technology like Web 2.0 that is spreading like wildfire across business units and corporate hierarchy, I imagine it’s hard to embrace it without running rigorous evaluation process.

Rightfully so, since Web 2.0 and consumer tools in general do require appropriate guidelines and corporate safeguards, as Burton Group’s Mike Gotta points out. Yet, especially if you are at the helm of a major corporation with tens of thousands of employees that are trying to get things done across multiple locations and departments, you cannot afford to ignore the Web 2.0 groundswell.

Web 2.0 solutions enable grassroots employee collaboration, expertise sharing, professional social networking, secure and customized information feeds, personalized access to enterprise application data, and additional added-value for the organization.

Moreover, by opening up your organization to secure consumer services and social tools, you will experience improved worker productivity, sharper competitive edge, smoother communications channel with partners and customers, streamlined work processes, and generally attract tech-savvy, top talent as part of the team.

So, before you sail past it, I suggest you explore Web 2.0 and let it help you navigate the unknown seas that still lie ahead.

…just a few thoughts from one CEO to another,
Shahar

E-Banking is great. It really is. I access my bank’s e-banking application at least a couple of times a month. I check my balance, look at the latest transactions, make sure the paycheck came in on time and then try to figure out where it all went…

I’ve been using e-banking for at least five years, and I recently realized, while trying to figure out the latest installment of ‘The Mystery of the Disappearing Dollars’, how little the experience has changed in those five years.

The Web has advanced tremendously and broadband Internet has led to an explosion of rich content, online voice and video communication, social networking, personalized home pages, gadgets, widgets, RSS and many other useful tools and services.

Yet, my e-banking application still shows the same balance and transactions page, lets me run the same queries, performs the same transfers and generates the same statements and reports. (It also shows a disturbingly consistent savings account balance, but that’s a different story).

Financial institutes and commercial banks in particular have always been conservative organizations, and rightfully so. We entrust them with our most valued assets. We expect them to safeguard those assets with prudence and diligence, and not hop on to any passing technological bandwagon just because it’s cool. But the Web 2.0 technologies I talk about can no longer be considered a passing fad. They have become ingrained in how we spend our time online, how we work and play, and slowly but surely, these technologies are making headway in the banking space.

Even today, if you search RSS and gadget directories you will find that some banks and related organizations are using Web 2.0 channels to stay in touch with customers and provide useful information (for instance, visit iGoogle, click on ‘add stuff‘ and then search for ‘American Express‘).

Now picture a gadget on your iGoogle page that lets you know at a glance what your credit card balance is and when your next payment is due, or an RSS feed that gets populated on the fly whenever your bank account is debited for an amount over $500. With the advent of tools that allow banks to deliver these types of services with the same level of security provided by existing e-banking applications, the widespread availability of such services is only a matter of time.

What does this mean for us? Well, for one thing, we’ll finally see a change in those good-old e-banking applications, and I’ll have one less thing to rant about, but more importantly, we’ll be able to access our banking information online where and when we want it, and take control over our finances. After all, I visit my e-banking site twice a month, but I visit iGoogle a dozen times a day.

Yuval

I am often asked how to best leverage the social networking world for business purposes and personal growth.  So I have put together a short list that sums up a few pointers to get you started on secure enterprise social networking:

1. Set limits about what you are willing to expose about yourself and remember the context of the interaction (business or personal). Be wary, since embarrassing or inappropriate information about yourself may appear in contexts that you did not expect. It is very difficult to “clean up” your profile later on.
2. Social networks are not just for play. Treat the network as a resource of valuable information, and tap into your colleagues’ expertise with the collaborative tools available on the network.
3. Educate your social networking friends, and they will rely on you as a valuable resource. Incorporate news items, blog posts and interesting tidbits into the discussion. Social networks are all about sharing information with your friends and work colleagues. 
4. Try and build a single “space” where all your friends meet – work, family, etc. Many of these contacts are more than just friends, co-workers or professional acquaintances anyways. Trying to work with multiple networking platforms makes life confusing and much harder to network.
5. Do not spam your friends or network. Most social networking platforms have a sophisticated yet absolutely lethal mechanism to eradicate spammers or “unsolicited evangelists”. You can still talk about the issues that matter to you and engage friends and coworkers using the collaboration tools available on the network, without exploiting them.
6. Word of advice - do not badmouth your company’s customers in an open discussion group. It is bound to bounce back and one day you may find a cardboard box with your name on it waiting on your desk. Be civilized in your discussions.
7. Secret is not secured. Some social networks, like Facebook, allow users to engage in private or secret groups. Although these forums take place away from the public eye, apt hackers can still crack open the discussion boards and access conversations, unless appropriate enterprise-grade safeguards have been put in place.
8. When adding RSS feeds to a feed reader, always prefer to use a link you got from the content provider’s web site rather than from any third party (an email, an IM, a link on a social networking site etc.) This improves the likelihood that the information you are seeing is what the content provider intended.
9. When entering your username and password on any site, always verify first that the URL in the browser’s address bar matches the URL of the site you (think) you are accessing. This is the best way to ensure your password won’t be intercepted by some evil-doer.
10. Never enter your username and password on a page you arrived at by clicking on a link in an email, IM message, third party web site or social networking site. These are the tools hackers use most often to steal passwords. 

David

Traditional HR is no more!

There, I said it: “Human Resources”, “Personnel”, “Talent Management” – all the old job descriptions are taking on a new meaning.

Your organization today needs to find new ways connect people with people; allow collaboration between peers; empower workers to drive business units forward; share responsibility without letting it fizzle; let teams and leaders drive initiatives and innovation. And the glue that must hold all of this together is a shared positive experience with personal and professional satisfaction. In fact, you could call that Enterprise Social Glue, if you’d like.

In the new world of work, the average employee is busy interacting on enterprise social networks, crunching numbers off an RSS feed, keeping up with news through a desktop gadget and off-and-on IM’ing with offshore partners. Employees simply cannot tolerate the tedious expense reports, the impossible-to-update time reporting and other annoying tasks.

In other words, a fundamental change in the way an organization interacts with the individual employee is necessary, especially if top talents are to be coaxed and recruited into the mix.

And if you thought money is the best incentive, think again – a recent Deloitte research shows that retaining and attracting talent depends significantly on allowing employees “to control when, where, and how they work. They’re happy to work hard, but want to do it on their terms.”

To empower employees and enable self-service mechanisms to such a degree, without loosing HR’s control and corporate guidance, organizations need to adopt Web 2.0 and social tools as part of the daily work routine. And it’s time for HR to drive this change inside the organization.

So, whether you are surrounded by a field of cubicles or wondering a desert of open office space, keep in mind that for your company to keep growing, you need to provide employees with the right tools and a fair amount of social glue.

Think about it.

Yonni