WK5

Your organization is a financial services firm that has a decentralized management structure including the management of IT resources. Each regional division has its own IT support organization which reports to the region's Vice President. The regional VP's have a great deal of authority and, in many cases, the regional divisions operate as if they were separate companies. It is now two years after you wrote your position paper about compliance management. The CEO and Board of Directors liked your responses during the interview process and you've held the position of CISO at the financial services firm for the past 18 months. All is not well ... having decentralized IT support teams reporting to the regional VP's has significantly and adversely impacted the implementation of a single IT Security Management program. The Board of Directors has met with the CEO and VP's and determined that management of all IT resources will be placed under a Chief Information Officer (CIO) who reports to the CEO. Your position as CISO will report the the new CIO and your responsibilities will be expanded to include managing the regional IT security teams. The regional VP's want to know how you are going to integrate their employees into your organization. To answer their questions and allay concerns, you've been asked to prepare a briefing to be given at the next senior leadership meeting. For that briefing you must research and answer the following questions: 1. What integration issues do merging companies face? 2. There are significant cultural influences which have been seen between the various regional divisions. What techniques can you and your central office team of security professionals use to ease cultural differences as the regional teams are integrated with your central team? 3. How can you and your management team bring everyone together to form a single organization? How can you make the regional IT teams feel comfortable? 4. One of the most "invisible" barriers to success is the perception / feelings regarding "loss of control." How can you ease these concerns / fears and build a positive, high functioning team? Organize your talking points around the four sets of questions. Then write your responses as a 5 to 7 paragraph briefing paper (you may use some bullet points but the majority of the content should be organized as paragraphs). This paper will be sent to the VP's and other senior leaders to read prior to the senior leadership meeting. Post your briefing paper as a reply to this topic. Remember to cite your sources and include your reference list at the end of your posting.