Security and data ownership: Old issues in a new wineskin

Security and data center ownership were big issues 15 years ago when the federal government attempted to move agencies to consolidate data centers and share information technology services.

Guess what? These are still concerns today, as the Office of Management and Budget attempts once again to achieve IT operation efficiencies and cost-savings through data center consolidation.

But this time around there is a difference, said Mark Hamilton, program manager of infrastructure technology services within the Justice Departments’ Justice Management Division.

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Systems were separate entities and didn’t interact with each other 15 years ago. Since then The National Institute of Standards and Technology guidelines have provided a consistent sense of security requirements that can be applied across an agency, he noted. He spoke Sept. 16 during a panel at a Data Center Optimization conference in Washington, D.C. sponsored by AFFIRM and the Government Information Technology Executive Council.

Data ownership is a big issue, especially because of the move toward service-oriented architecture, which decouples large applications and breaks business functions and processes into discrete services. The business owners are open to having a dialogue about how the amalgamation of information systems can save money, Hamilton said. But they still have concerns of ownership rights as data is segmented within virtual systems, he said.