The IT and Security Teams: Buddies or Rivals?

Once upon a time in a corporate world long forgotten by most, all things technology were governed by a select team of specialists known collectively as “IT”.  Their rule was absolute on matters such as which technologies the company acquired, which applications were built, and who could use such tools, even when they could be used.

These IT gods established security commandments for their systems:

That was just about all IT had to worry about when it came to security.

That is until November 2, 1988, when a graduate student named Robert Morris unleashed a worm on the Internet effectively shutting down thousands of Unix-based computers and the Internet itself. From that day on, information security grew from a ho-hum annual reminder to users into a critical business entity. Our access to core business systems, our jobs, and our personal information all had to be defended.

In fact, security or cybersecurity became one of the key functions of IT and a hot career choice, leading to today’s environment where the chief information security officer (CISO) often stands as a peer to the CIO and oversees a dedicated team of professionals with broad responsibilities.

So, how do the traditional IT group of developers and operations people and the security team work together? Do they?

InformationWeek.com and our associates at DarkReading.com and Interop set out to understand the dynamics of the IT and security teams in the enterprise world. We want to understand -- and help our readers see -- how the relationship between IT and security is working and evolving.

Who calls which shots? How are the two groups staffed? Where does each report? Who gets the budget increases? How do the groups communicate? Where do their responsibilities overlap? Are there separate groups at all?

With that in mind, we invite you to participate in our joint research project, a survey to study how the IT and security teams can best work together and the state of IT and security in today’s enterprise world.

Whether you are an IT professional or a cybersecurity professional -- or someone who works on both -- we truly appreciate your help with this survey on how the two disciplines work together (or if they don’t).

Key survey facts:
-The survey will only take about 7 minutes of your time.
-You may opt in to receive the forthcoming report once the research is complete.
-You will have an opportunity to enter a drawing where five randomly selected winners will each receive a $50 Amazon gift card from Informa Tech.
Take the survey:

As with all of our surveys, all responses are anonymous and will remain strictly confidential. The data you provide will be reported in aggregate with that of other participants.

Thank you in advance for taking time out of your busy schedule to help with this survey. Feel free to email our research director ([email protected]), if you have any questions.