WSJ's "Inside Out" article hits the enterprise control issue

Today's Wall Street Journal (this link requires a subscription; see page R5 in the hard copy version) offers an article titled, "Inside Out: employees often use unauthorized technologies at work. Does that compromise security? Or enhance productivity? Two experts debate the issue."

The position of hard limits on employee capability was taken by Tom Tabor, CIO for Highmark, a Pittsburgh -based health insurance firm. The opposing view was taken by Douglas Merrill, CIO at Google.

I'd engaged in some friendly banter with Stephen O'Grady at RedMonk on this general topic. I'd also jumped to be something of a voice of reason for Anant Jhingran in his debates with the VC community on this topic.

Looks like I hadn't fully appreciated the degree of commitment by IT executives to keep the invading legions out of their shops!

As Mr. Tabor wrote, "We do not allow access to any Web-based email, instant messaging or Wi-Fi access. We do not see material impact to our employees by restricting access to these."

Of course, as Google's Mr. Merrill points out, "Choice is key - for good and for ill. ... changes makes our jobs in IT harder. We can't put that genie back in the bottle..."

Is it even possible to build a mid-ground for folks like Mr. Tabor? One that would enable them to attain all the privacy and compliance requirements they simply must address -- and yet begin to make some collaboration and community technologies available to their teams? How might we do this?


(Image attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=184140074&size=m; by Luiza)