In the current competitive landscape, businesses have to face the pressure to keep up with ever-changing business and market demands. For those who do not keep up with the speed of innovation they may not be able to survive in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace. Undergoing a digital transformation and moving to cloud can help organizations innovate faster and offer an enhanced customer experience, yet many can struggle because the process of digital transformation can be complex and present new challenges, including organizational alignment and growing cybersecurity risks. Done right, businesses can actually speed up their digital transformation, and do it in a secure manner.

Challenges Facing Organizations Undergoing Digital Transformation

Undergoing digital transformation is not an easy feat: it often requires a complete reimagination of customer experiences, organizational culture and business processes. Given the pervasive nature of change, one of the most significant challenges can be achieving alignment across organizational silos. These functional and cultural silos can become one of the inhibitors to securing the digital journey. Misalignment can result in product launch delays, second-rate customer experiences and increased cybersecurity risks.

A second critical challenge for organizations undergoing digital transformation is securing their increasingly fragmented IT environment. The majority of organizations spread their critical data and applications across multiple cloud environments. This technological sprawl creates a larger attack surface area and can expose the organization to more complex attack vectors from malicious actors. This reality perpetuates the risk of attack as security teams struggle with too many security tools, too much data to process and not enough cyber skills among their workforce.

Enterprise Security at the Speed of a Startup

Security leaders must consider changing their approach to digital transformation. They first need to make their security objectives align to the organization’s overall business goals. They then need to apply the rapid, iterative methodologies that we often associate with agile product development to how they solve security challenges for their business and end users. This can help security teams deliver a more effective security program without slowing down the speed of change required by the business.

The IBM Garage methodology has helped hundreds of organizations accelerate innovation and act like a startup through design workshops, coding jams and immersive projects. But the Garage methodology has never before been extended to the security needs of the business. This is why I’m so excited to announce Security with IBM Garage, a brand-new offering that helps organizations to reimagine the way they drive security into the fabric of their business, accelerate their digital transformation and align with key organizational stakeholders.

Security with IBM Garage is a bold approach to security innovation and digital transformation. Using agile methodologies, our Garage experts first team with business and IT stakeholders to align them around the most pressing security goals that dramatically impact their business. From there, our experts co-create security solutions with our clients around the world, helping them navigate the an optimal path forward while taking advantage of solutions across IBM Security, Cloud and AI technologies.

Security with IBM Garage brings together innovative methodology and experience from across IBM. Together with our clients, Security with IBM Garage professionals focus on outcomes first and apply advanced technologies with a purpose – to help accelerate digital transformation with security.