Me and my job: Implementation of a citywide corporate wireless network

How do you describe your job to average people?

Explaining what I do is very difficult for non-technical individuals, which usually results in the answer: I work on computers. How do you describe your responsiblity for ensuring the integrity of an organization's infrastructure to someone whose scope of understanding is that Windows 2010 keeps locking up?

What was one of your biggest challenges?

One of my largest challenges has been the implementation of a citywide corporate wireless network, ensuring the technology used and the security encompassing the implementation was inline with maintaining the integrity of the organization. When access to the corporate network is no longer confined to the physical buildings, the risk of exposure to corporate data increases drastically.

What keeps you up at night?

Real concern is around disaster response and ensuring we have created a secure yet dynamic infrastructure. A disaster brings factors that may expose corporate data to multiple agency users who may not be part of the organization. Hence, my focus is to ensure that we are prepared to maintain data security and network integrity despite the possibility of having multi-agency devices using our infrastructure.

Of what are you most proud?

I am most proud of the opportunity to serve the citizens of this great city, and of the team I get to work with. We all have our areas of expertise and have developed a secure and high integrity-focused infrastructure dedicated to protecting our customers' data.

For what would you use a magic IT security wand?

I would use an IT security wand to increase end-users' awareness of network and data security in order to provide them with a greater understanding of how they contribute to the risks associated with exposing corporate data through their personal computing habits.

From the November 2011 Issue of SCMagazine »