InsightaaS: Within the financial services sector, Michael Loftus is well-known as an expert in client technology, and in connecting users with IT-based systems through the effective deployment of client technology. After guiding the Workspace and infrastructure planning, design and client services functions at two major FIs, Loftus moved to create Hyper T, a new consulting firm (very new – it doesn’t launch until September!) focused on Microsoft, Citrix and OpenStack technologies.
Loftus’s colleagues and LinkedIn followers (more than 3,000) value his perspective on how to position new technology trends within enterprise-ready IT strategies, and this post provides a good illustration of why. In it, he offers an interesting take on wearables. Most IT managers (especially from an FI background) look at wearables as a potential security headache. Loftus doesn’t avoid this observation, but he moves beyond it: acknowledging that the devices are likely to exist within the workplace with or without IT sanction, he wonders whether the real opportunity here is to focus on “employee experience and starting to delight employees.” Is this IT’s opportunity “to for just once not be seen as ‘Doctor No’?”
You don’t have to be particularly “plugged in” to be aware of the massive hype around “wearables” like smart watches, fitness tracking bracelets, sensors that track your golf swing, etc.
People talk about the “qualified self” where we will track all sorts of data about ourselves, use that data to improve our lives, and maybe the way certain professions provide us services (doctors, fitness coaches, insurance agents. et al)
Equally, you have to be consciously closing your eyes and blocking your ears not to hear about the many security and data risks associated with many wearable solutions. Apparently much of the data currently collected on our devices is easily accessed via known BlueTooth vulnerabilities. Yikes! Now there are new versions of Bluetooth that can be secure, and vendors who are truly concerned about protecting your data, but most are looking for quick, simple deployments and fast sales. (and 25 years of PC malware has taught us that many of our friends and family will not ask the right security questions, or take the right security steps).
So given that, why would any enterprise IT manager start planning or worrying about wearables?
1. the prevalence of BYOD Smartphones in the enterprise says that people are going to have the means to use wearables while in our facilities…
Read the entire post (may require you to be logged into LinkedIn): Link
