Alltel Exec: Security Must Be a Priority.(Rob Lee)(Brief Article)

When it comes to issues of security, Alltel employees have been trained to look for the shark. According to Alltel's executive vice president Rob Lee, the shark logo his company uses to keep employees thinking about security is one step in making it a constant concern.

"You have to think like Coke," he told the audience at the third annual National Mortgage News Mortgage EC Conference here. "Yes, they are a marketing firm, but their business is built around one piece of information, the Coke formula."

Just as Coke guards its formula relentlessly (only a few key executives even know it and they are forbidden from ever writing it down on paper), mortgage lenders should guard their own customer data.

"In 1999, 75% of the mortgage industry was isolated from the Internet," Mr. Lee said. "The prediction is that in 2004, 80% will have some critical key process enabled through the Internet."

And that, he says, is the problem.

When companies start the work of integrating their entire operation for the Web, they take security very seriously. But when they are just enabling one or two processes, they forget that they have created a doorway that makes their entire operation vulnerable. He uses the example of a website that a company might launch for less than $10,000 with off-the-shelf components. Because the project budget is small, security concerns are limited. But if it interfaces in any way with the rest of the operation, the risk to the company is very high.

There are two sources of danger for most corporate websites, Mr. Lee told the audience. The first has to do with corporate espionage perpetrated by competitors. The second has to do with hackers.