Digital security is a trade-off. If securing digital data were the only concern a business had, users would have no control over their own computing environment at all-the Web would be forbidden territory; every disk drive would be welded shut. The . . .
Digital security is a trade-off. If securing digital data were the only concern a business had, users would have no control over their own computing environment at all-the Web would be forbidden territory; every disk drive would be welded shut. The current compromise between security and flexibility is a sort of intranet-plus-firewall sandbox, where the IT department sets the security policies that workers live within. This allows workers a measure of freedom and flexibility while giving their companies heightened security.

That was the idea, anyway. In practice, the sandbox model is broken. Some of the problem is technological, of course, but most of the problem is human. The model is broken because the IT department isn't rewarded for helping workers do new things, but for keeping existing things from breaking. Workers who want to do new things are slowly taking control of networking, and this movement toward decentralized control cannot be reversed.