Anton Chuvakin
Original URL: http://blogs.gartner.com/anton-chuvakin/2012/06/29/how-are-we-doing-compared-to-peers/ | Archive.org Snapshot
Research Director
1 year with Gartner
12 years IT industry
Anton Chuvakin is a research director at Gartner's IT1 Security and Risk Management group. Before Mr. Chuvakin joined Gartner, his job responsibilities included security product management, evangelist… Read Full Bio
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by Anton Chuvakin | June 29, 2012 | 1 Comment
I learned something new the other day (yes, I love my job a lot for that reason). A high percentage of people I take inquiries from (called “dialogs” in our team due to its Burton roots) ask me: how are we doing compared to our peers? The first time I was asked that, it took me a bit by surprise. Sure, it is nice to know it, but how important is it really? It turned out it is really, really important for many organizations, and I hear that question very often.
Some want to know what organizations of their size are doing, others mostly care about what their peers in the industry are doing, etc. Once I’ve heard something to the effect of “our RISK is that, unless we know it, we’d spend more than our peers on security and thus lose our competitive edge” (by the way, this is a fictitious quote). Moreover, some organizations are not just “very interested” in this – they are literally obsessed with it. In fact, they won’t make any security decision, unless they know that their peers are doing it too.
As I result, I did some thinking about it and this is what came out:
Finally, Gartner has a few useful tools to connect to that information:
Category: compliance philosophy security Tags: security
1 LonerVamp July 3, 2012 at 9:39 pm
I’d guess it’s often a budget thing. Are my peers spending scads of money on BCP/DR? If not, maybe we shouldn’t bother either?
It’s also kinda like being someplace new and not knowing what to do or where to go. But you see lots of people getting in line to press a button and walk through a turnstyle, so you think maybe that’s what you need to be doing as well.
Also in line with budgets, I think it help legitimizes efforts. If John Doe needs to get a project going in his company, but the company isn’t quite yet pulling the trigger, perhaps this is the last little bit of oomph needed to get things done. “Hey, our competitors are doing this, we better as well.”
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