Jane Edwards
Tommy Gardner, chief technology officer of HP Federal, said information technology organizations should advance the development of a proactive defense to prevent an IT mistake from leading to an “error string” or a cascade of errors, InformationWeek reported Wednesday.
“IT teams should think through multiple problems at once, understand the limits and constraints of their system, and build structured protocols to adhere to on an ongoing basis,” said Gardner, a key member of Executive Mosaic’s GovCon Expert program.
He called on organizations to train team members on IT best practices to keep minor errors from developing into larger IT issues, conduct independent software testing and schedule regular updates of codes to protect proprietary and open-source software from vulnerabilities.
Gardner highlighted the role of system knowledge in avoiding an error string and urged organizations to present scenarios of error strings to their IT teams to challenge them to come up with new approaches to address such flaws.
“This can be a fun tabletop exercise and, if you can create collaboration across the security and IT teams, you’re better positioned to avoid vulnerabilities and product functionality issues,” he added.
