Two Experts Look At Trust, Relationships and the Future of Compliance - Marv Goldschmitt and Ashwani Kaul

Over breakfast this week, my friend, Marv Goldschmitt of Tizor Systems, told me about an article that he had recently co-authored with Ashwani Kaul, of CA, Inc. (formerly Computer Associates) Ashwani also serves as a member of the Board of Advisors for Tizor. I was intrigued by the premise of the article, and could not wait to read it. It was recently published in the ISSA Journal - The Global Voice of Information Security. A link to the entire article is provided below through the Website of Tizor systems, where Marv serves as the VP of Business Development.

http://www.tizor.com/news-events/upload/ISSA%20Journal%202_06.pdf

As I spoke with Marv and Ashwani about the article, I asked them to help me to frame the thrust of the article for two kinds of people who would be reading the article through my Blog. The two groups I posited are: business leaders who need to make trust-related and information security-related decisions for their businesses, and consumers who are concerned about issues of identity theft and trust when using on-line tools.

Both Marv and Ashwani expressed to me that their goal in offering their thoughts in this article was to encourage readers to take a step back from the day-to-day worries about information security – the granular level of firewalls and intrusions and unauthorized usage – to take a more global, historical and philosophical look at how we arrived at the point where we even need to worry about these kinds of issues in our daily and commercial lives. Marv pointed out to me that we are at the dawn of the fifth stage of modes of exchange – having progressed from barter through coinage to paper money to plastic and now to the introduction of digital data as the lingua franca of exchange. How we do business is undergoing a rapid and sweeping sea change. Ashwani pointed out that he and Marv hope, through this article, to trigger people to think about the forest of the “why” of information security, rather than being lost among trees of the “how.”

One of my reactions to this article is to ponder the question: “As we come to depend more and more on technology to protect us and to provide a layer of trust in commercial transactions, what happens to traditional interpersonal relationships." When I raised this issue with Kaul, he concurred that relationships become disintermediated as we move towards a truly global economy. As someone who has come to see the world largely through the lens of relatioships, I am troubled by this evolutionary process, but I also do not want to pitch my tent among the Luddites! What to do!

Once you have had an opportunity to read and digest the article that Marv and Ashwani have authored, you may want to return to the realm of the practical and check out a new resource that Kaul made me aware of in our conversation this morning. On the Home Page of Site Advisor, you can read the following: “We test the Web to keep you safe from spyware, Spam, viruses and online scams.”

http://www.siteadvisor.com/preview/

Be safe!

Al