Gartner: a good offense is best defense.

• Position: RISK MANAGEMENT

A good defense isn't enough when it comes to ensuring an organization's data security, Gartner analysts told participants at the firm's Symposium/ITxpo 2012 held in October in Orlando. With the speed at which technology is changing and the agility of hackers is increasing, threats to security are growing faster than the means to defend against them. The time has come to stop just reacting and begin taking proactive measures, said Gartner analysts.

According to InformationWeek.com, Gartner Research Vice President Greg Young stressed the need for enterprises to focus on three main areas: protection of infrastructure (keeping the bad guys out); managing identity and access (letting the good guys in); and business continuity, compliance, and risk management (policies that keep the wheels on).

Young cited several factors that have made protecting infrastructure increasingly difficult, including emerging trends around software-defined networking, virtualization, cloud computing, and mobile smart devices. Strategic infrastructure planning, he concluded, doesn't try to address all threats, but rather requires aligning security mechanisms with an effective, carefully considered user-access policy.

Gartner Vice President Earl Perkins addressed the identity and access management issue. He suggested that enterprises could take advantage of social networking processes to improve user access management. Enterprises...