By Computerworld Philippines Staff
October 1, 2008

If there was one topic that would never stale or become irrelevant, it would be security.
This was the consensus of speakers and guests during Computerworld Philippines’ mid-year gathering of CIOs and IT executives that was held to celebrate the publication’s 17th anniversary in July.

During the panel discussion on “Safeguarding Your Data,” industry experts and government representatives talked about their respective views and opinions on how challenging securing data has become and what can be done by both the private and public sectors.

The panelists were: Dennis Omila, head of the information security and IT governance divisions of Globe Telecom, and who is also the coordinator for the Information Security Steering Committee (ISSC); Philip Casanova, assistant vice president and head of the information security office at China Banking Corporation (CBC); Bayan Communications chief information officer, Luisito Cuevas; and Undersecretary Virtus Gil, National Cyber Security Coordinator and Deputy National Security Adviser.

Talking about the Internet—its potential dangers and how we can be protected from crimes committed over the Web—Undersecretary Gil highlighted the importance of awareness and cooperation between and among the public and private sector, including ordinary consumers, as well as cementing inter-government efforts to protect citizens against cyber crime. “An overarching task is to increase awareness at every level of society—in government, in the private sector, in civil society, and even among individuals—of the need for, and the goals of, security, privacy and cyber crime prevention and control,” he said.

Meanwhile, Chinabank’s Casanova discussed what could be information security’s greatest irony—the need to protect and secure data which, at the same time, has to be shared. “If you don’t do it, you leave your system wide open to predators, wide open to hackers, and the information inside your database could easily be manipulated, corrupted or even stolen. On the other hand, if you do implement it and put in too much security, you may end up sacrificing the usability of your system,” Casanova said.

“Information security wasn’t always this complicated. I’ve personally seen how the security landscape has evolved over the last decade or so,” shared Omila of Globe Telecom. Omila presented his views on the evolution of the security landscape—security vendors buying out other security firms, new security threats emerging, and the need to strengthen the security incident response capabilities within various key sectors in the Philippines.

“Technology is constantly changing; what we once thought was the best practice could become obsolete with the emergence of new technologies, new security processes,” says Bayan Telecommunications CIO, Louie Cuevas. The executive talked about one of the biggest challenges faced by today’s IT departments—catching up with constant changes in technology and the need to fill a seemingly endless gap between evolving business needs and the solutions available.

The gathering turned out to be a very interactive discussion where several IT executive guests threw in their share of insights as well as questions to the panelists, enriching the discussion further to cover various security issues relevant to today’s organizations.

After the panelists presented their respective views on the topic, a panel of reactors composed of IT experts from Brocade Communications Systems Inc., Sophos Anti-Virus Asia, and American Power Conversion Corp. (APC) shared their own insights and made reacts to the presentations of the panelists.

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