The IT security landscape is littered with landmines both technological and political. It can seem like an imposible task to secure the company's information assets, but there are ways to avoid five of the biggest mistakes waiting to happen, writes NetworkWorld's Ellen Messmer.

Technology is not the only thing that is changing rapidly these days. IT executives have to stay on top of changes in the company mindset if they want to retain their influence. With organizations moving applications and other resources to the cloud, and with employees using personal devices for work, staying one step ahead of the game is a necessity for IT security.

While security often means saying "no," it doesn't have to mean alienating colleagues in the rest of the IT department or in upper management. Communicating early and often--especially before it's time to say "no"--is a vital component of making sure the security pros are heard.

The virtualization wave is creating a sea change for IT architecture, but security hasn't kept pace. Security products that worked well before do not necessarily do the trick with virtual machines. "The reality is that virtualization architectures change everything by opening new pathways that can be exploited. As has happened so many times before in the IT industry, groundbreaking technologies have become available for use with inadequate attention paid to the security impact," Messmer writes. 

It's tempting to turn things over to security vendors once you've established a good rapport with them, but becoming complacent is a mistake to avoid. Virtualization and cloud computing require new security solutions, and customers shouldn't become lax about finding new technologies to fill these gaps. "In some sense, it's a time of chaos as the IT industry undergoes a reinvention. But that only means that IT security is going to have to push harder to get what it believes the organization needs now or in the future," Messmer writes.

For more:
- see Ellen Messmer's article at Network World

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