Enterprise architecture: The key to cybersecurity

When I first discuss security in our Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA) SOA course, I ask the class the following question: if a building had 20 exterior doors, and you locked 19 of them, would you be 95% secure? The answer to this 20-doors problem, of course, is absolutely not – you’d be 0% secure, since the bad guys are generally smart enough to find the unlocked door.

While the 20-doors problem serves to illustrate how important it is to secure your Services as part of a comprehensive enterprise IT strategy, the same lesson applies to enterprise Cybersecurity in general: applying inconsistent security policies across an organization leads to weaknesses hackers are only too happy to exploit.

However, when we’re talking about the entire enterprise, the Cybersecurity challenge is vastly more complex than simply securing all your software interfaces. Adequate security involves people, process, information, as well as technology. Getting …