Introduction

In the beginning of this book, we looked at the past world of the ISSO professional. We then transitioned to today's InfoSec world; that of the global marketplace; and the corporate world of the ISSO and InfoSec staff. We will conclude this book with an overview of the possible future working environment of the ISSO professional and what the ISSO professional must do today to prepare to address tomorrow's information and information systems assets protection issues. ^[2]

As we look at the past, the present, and their trends, we can project those trends to provide some reasonable, at least short-term, visions of the future working environment of the ISSO professional.

As we progress through the 21st century, the ISSO will face many challenges—many brought on by high technology, but not all of them. Let's look into the possible future. We'll begin by taking the broad view and narrowing it down to the narrower, InfoSec-focused outlook, in the following order:

• Nation-states

• Societies

• High technology

• Global competition

• The future of the ISSO professional

• Managing an InfoSec department in the future

Keep in mind that changes cause conflicts and destabilize information environments (IE). Therefore, the more things change, the more risks there are to IE assets. Since we are now globally connected, any change anywhere has a likelihood of adversely affecting an ISSO's IE.

^[2]Some of the material in this chapter was excerpted from other books written by Dr. Kovacich and is reproduced with permission of the publisher, Butterworth-Heinemann.