Corporate Infrastructure Protection

Corporations have finite Infrastructure and scarce Resources.

Corporations need methods to evolve strategic internal initiatives from their Infrastructure and Resources.

Corporations need methods to protect their Infrastructure and Resources from external initiatives (i.e. unwanted events and incidents).

The purpose of this new series of posts is to demonstrate that corporate strategic planning and corporate infrastructure protection planning can/should be carried out within the same e-platform.

It will immediately become obvious that the methods/steps for Corporate Strategic Planning (CSP) are different from methods/steps needed for Corporate Infrastructure Protection Planning (CIPP).

Not so obvious is that an e-platform that is capable of hosting RBV (Resource-Based View) is the platform of choice for practicing both CSP and CIPP.

Strategic Planning

The usual approach to strategic planning is

   Infrastructure/Resources Inventory ->

Strategy ->

   Initiatives ->

      Competitive Advantage

Reading between the lines, the process unfolds as follows:

1. Corporations have finite infrastructure and scarce resources.
2. Infrastructure/resources decay over time.
3. The only way to increase competitive advantage is to evolve initiatives that allocate Infrastructure/resources and make good use of such infrastructure/resources.
4. Each initiative needs a risk rating, ROI, goals/objectives, and a timeline. It is important to avoid biased mixes of initiatives within the range “low risk, high return, short timeline” and “high risk, low return, long timeline”.
5. Strategies/initiatives/goals/objectives need periodic monitoring and, where needed, adjustment.

Corporate Infrastructure Protection Planning

The model for Corporate Infrastructure Protection planning is

External Events Inventory ->

   Risk Assessment of Possible Events ->

      Vulnerability Assessment/Remediation ->

         Event Detection ->

            Incident Avoidance/Counter Action(s)

If avoidance/counteraction tactics fail, the corporation moves forward to

Incident Management ->

   Recovery

Reading between the lines, the process unfolds as follows:

1. In the area of Infrastructure Protection, most, but not all, events come from the outside. Usually, there is no advance warning of an event.
2. Events quickly escalate to incidents to damage/destruction.
3. Corporations need to have an inventory of possible Events and a ready set of ways and means to prevent events from becoming incidents, plus, when this fails, ways and means of managing incidents and recovering from incidents.
4. Corporate assets can have strong links – if one link in a value chain breaks, an entire set of assets can become dysfunctional or be destroyed.
5. Events/incidents need to be pre-assessed for risk.
6. Time is of the essence – some incidents require counteraction within seconds of the detection of events.
7. Event detection is  a 24 x 7 job.

Strategic Planning is key to building competitive advantage (i.e. strategy -> internal initiatives -> competitive advantage), Infrastructure Protection Planning puts a focus on readiness and resilience (i.e. external events awareness,  events, incidents, recovery).

What is remarkable is that corporations that subscribe to RBV (Resource Based View) can carry out strategic planning and infrastructure protection planning at the same e-platform.

The obvious starting benefit is a common inventory of corporate assets (i.e. assets to be deployed, assets to be protected).

Stay tuned to learn how you can build strategy and infrastructure protection plans in an e-platform (i.e. 3D free-form-search Knowledgebases).