Mohammad Akif on Emerging Trends in Canadian IT Security: The Efficiency Platform Interview Series

In November, Mohammad Akif – National Security and Privacy Lead for Microsoft Canada – spoke with IT in Canada Chief Content Officer Michael O’Neil about emerging trends in Canadian IT security.  During the course of their discussion, Mr. Akif offered his perspective on current issues in the dynamic IT security market, including the need to extend security into the design of applications, and the balance between protection, or the ability to safeguard users and data from threats like malware, and prevention, the ability to keep sensitive data from leaking out of the corporation and into the hands of criminals or into the public domain, as well as the related ability to support compliance activities through auditable workflow procedures.



Highlights of the interview include:

• On the need to continue to invest in security during tough economic times: “Companies have realized that the cost of not investing in security is significantly higher than in getting the security process right, getting their people trained, and investing in the right technology. If they are not able to do that or if they put that on the back burner, then the resulting damage to their goodwill, to their reputation, to their sales, is significantly higher.”
• On why Canadian businesses often prefer to source security solutions from specialists, rather than from their mainstream IT suppliers:  “Unfortunately, most of our computer science curricula, not just in Canada, but overall in the universities, do not pay as much attention to security [as they should]. So somebody who comes out of a university may be a great developer or IT professional, but they are not by default learning how to write secure code. That is something that is an acquired skill now.”

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