Confidentially speaking

There is expectation in the air. Everyone is on their starting blocks ready to explode the moment the signal is given. Elbows are in the ready to teach usurpers a sharp lesson. The moment arrives and the train pulls into the platform. There is a frenzy of action and everybody wants to prove the theory that a camel can indeed pass through the eyes of a needle by wanting to be the first into the compartment. Invariably, you find the early birds occupying all the luggage space with their suitcases and after much dark muttering, glares, open altercations, every one settles in.

Then the verbal diarrhoea that resides in our persona takes over and the gabfest starts! The rules of this activity are:

Tell total strangers your intimate secrets, preferably without their asking for them.

Do so in your loudest voice

Disturb the peace in as wide a radius as possible

Where night travel is concerned, continue till the wee hours till someone works up the temerity to tell you to shut up

This is what makes travel by trains in India such fun! And yes, you can trust me to find some tenuous connection to the corporate world even from such an event!

The IT infrastructure guys are asked to find fool-proof ways to ensure security in the company's IT systems. Among other things, they are told that data of all forms and e-mails are the most confidential matters and must be secure at all costs. The poor guys take their jobs seriously and come up with concentric layers of security with electronic moats around each layer, full of nasty e-piranhas, ready to pounce on any intruder.

D-day arrives and the security plan is unveiled and the big Kahunas beam with pleasure and send out tough sounding messages to the other levels of the pyramid that, hence forth, these policies must be strictly followed. Let's see what happens next:

What is my password? Within a few days, a few of the big-shots would have forgotten their passwords and will frantically call the IT guys to help out. The password will be reconfigured and the affected parties will make sure that they remember their password by writing it out on a Post-it pad and sticking it onto their laptop, iPad or whatever.

Do I need to change my password so often? In about a month's time, they will try to log in and will be thwarted. A heartfelt, plaintive cry will go forth when faced with the necessity to change passwords on a regular basis. That will lead us back to the scenario presented above.

Why can't I access any Web site that I wish to see? The security policy would have blocked access to many sites and there will be a demand to reverse this position. The thin end of the wedge will be in place and slowly but steadily erosion will start like rats nibbling at cheese.

Enough said on the matter of e-security.

When we walk around our offices, often times we notice confidential documents lying around in the open; I am sure we have also been witnesses to what happens soon after pay raises or stock option grants are announced — there is frenzied file sharing. Even if you are in the minority that respects confidentiality, you can be sure some people will ask you prying questions! Most people become experts at tea leaf reading and interpreting smoke signals; very few look at the logic underpinning such signals. Of course, I make the basic assumption here that the senior folk have been logical and fair in their assessment and rewards process.

In the Indian context, people in most companies still seem to operate as though they belong to a corporate joint family. A friend of mine has an interesting job sensitising foreign customers as to the cultural and behavioural drivers that govern our way of doing things. He told me that we carry a strong imprint of our joint-family DNA in our professional behaviour as well. In effect, sharing everything is commonplace and privacy and personal space, strange concepts. This seems to be still at play even as nuclear families are on the rise.

Given this background, it seems clear that fancy infrastructure and strong systems cannot by themselves achieve the security we seek. The foundation has to be a way of thinking that values and respects confidentiality and the need for private space. Senior managers must lead the way through their behaviour and, crucially, cascade their preferences in this matter down the line. Exemplary punishment for serious breaches of security covenants must be strictly enforced.

In essence, we must make sure that mindset takes priority over matter and that confidences are meant to be kept and not spoken about. I am reminded of a story when a “wise man” who was waiting for a ferry to ford a river in Kerala was hailed by an onlooker who alerted him to the fact that a thief was making away with his steel trunk. The “wise man” smiled benignly and told the man, “Don't worry, what can the thief do with the trunk. I have the key to the lock!”

The writer is corporate advisor to 3i Infotech and Manipal Education and Medical Group. He can be reached at mcshekaran@gmail.com

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