Headsup: Put All Your Eggs in One Padded SafeHeadsup: Put All Your Eggs in One Padded Safe

Integrating systems brings productivity improvements, economies of scale and better enterprise-level control and intelligence. Unfortunately, though, integration sometimes increases vulnerability. Take for example one enterprise security manager who told research and advisory firm Burton Group that when he combined four corporate networks for efficiency, the resulting risk was 16 times higher than before. Risk aggregation is a growing problem because more and more businesses are integrating increasing numbers of systems.

An old-fashioned cost/benefit analysis is the answer to this challenge. Before embarking on an integration project, carefully determine how it will expose the business. It's conceivable that the consolidation will better protect the business in some ways, too. Figure out the cost of any net increase in risk. Compare that to the business costs of forgoing the integration.

Burton Group suggests identifying risks by graphing business functions of concern and all the elements on which they depend.