About a year and a half ago I took on a job at a government sanctioned enterprise. When I took on the role it was very simple. Do in 12 months what would normally take 48. It took my past roles as an engineer and a security professional and molded them together. It was a good gig when we had an unlimited budget. In one sense we were judicious in our needs. We were modest, as well as concious not to purchase what could not be implemented in 12 months. This last few months we were given the opportunity to look at the spending and had a modest chance finish the job this year. As I look at a real recessionary time I started to consider the realities of how great of an opportunity that is. On one hand, many look at it and say, that they are going to have it hard with budget cuts. My more frugal side is now looking at it as a grand opportunity to go an improve on the softer and, in my opinion, more important portions of the project.
The first questions I ask myself are:
Can we audit the implementation? Do we have in production not just everything we put on paper but also everything we asked for?
Are all of our devices put in correctly?
Did we layer in enough security?
What operational processes do we have?
I hope I can answer these in upcomming posts in the next few months.
