Presidential Security - Good Enough for You?

I recently traveled to Mexico City, in advance of Mr. Barack Obama, who arrived the next day with his entire presidential toolkit of vehicles, helicopters, Airforce One and related elements of world class travel. I was there on business, to foster the sales and marketing of my company's products with local partners and wholesalers. Mr. Obama was there to foster partnerships of a different nature, but I found some notable parallels. Bear with me as I mention a few, and how it might be worth considering for you or your company in today's menacing world of threats, spies and globalized communications and network connections.

Mr. Obama travels everywhere with a fleet of vehicles that is specially built to resist arms fire, bombs, chemical attack and who knows what else. His limousine is known as "The Beast" for its weight, girth and protective armor. He is safe from most any kind of threat while riding in this vehicle. He is, in effect, safe because of the protections provided to him in what we, at SonicWALL (my current employer), might called Unified Threat Management (UTM). By using the types of security protections that UTM offers, the president is sure to have no worries about his personal safety, when riding in the Beast.

At the same time, given Mr. Obama's penchant for staying connected to his loved ones and his inner circle via a Blackberry device, it stands to reason that he needs to be sure about his Email Security, so that no one reads his communications, nor infects them with viruses, spyware, malware or other dangerous worms that would compromise Mr. Obama's top-secret communications. This is another parallel with what SonicWALL offers --- a full suite of Email Security capabilities to protect email, which is today's most vital communications tool used by millions, if not billions of people around the world.

How about his remote connections to the White House, or to the Department of Defense data sources? How about the need for secure remote connections for his staff, the military and others, including Mr. Obama to data sources and servers that must remain off limits to all but those who are ID and Password-authorized to enter? This is where even a president would need a solution to provide SSL/VPN secure remote access capabilities from anywhere in the world to the data sources needed for day-to-day work and productivity. Notably, SonicWALL offers this, as well, and any of our customers can have presidential-quality connections this way, too.

Finally, if I'm allowed to draw the complete analogy, what does the President of the United States of America do for continuous back-up and business continuity? How does he handle it if an important speech he's working on for the Mexico City meeting or the subsequent Latin American summit in Trinidad and Tobago gets wiped out inadvertently on his PC? What happens if his hard disk gets corrupted and he loses everything, including multi-trillion dollar budget spreadsheets or top-secret secrets concerning what kind of dog his children will get? (This was a very closely-guarded secret, you know). He absolutely has to have a system that allows for a constant and seamless back-up of every creation and/or modification of data --- all words, numbers, photos, that are part of his important presidential duties. This we can provide as well, with SonicWALL's CDP product for back-up, recovery and business continuity. No missing tapes, no 13-minute blank spots (a la Richard Nixon) if you're using this type of continuous back-up technology.

So, even though my time and that of Mr. Obama was short in Mexico City, we both brought to Latin America our best arsenal of security practices. Each of us traveled with the tools needed to protect our communications, secure our connections, safeguard our email and back up our data, in case of some nefarious threat that might have compromised the free world. Each of us, I would say, arrived back in the USA, able to say, "Mission Accomplished" (apologies to George W. Bush).

Thoughts, comments or opinions? Interested in knowing more? Drop me a line or post a comment, and thanks for reading.

Other blogs of interest:

www.TopExec.org/TopExecBlog
http://sonicwallbrasil.blogspot.com/
http://sonicwallblog.blogspot.com/

©Daniel A. Cabrera, TopExec.org, all rights reserved, 2009.