What’s the biggest challenge to your IoT future? I’ll be at IBM InterConnect next week. As always when I go to these events, I reach out to clients to discover what they want to know about what I’m working on. This year, almost all my discussions in information technology revolve around help building out my clients’ IoT security capabilities.

Because of the sensitive nature of these projects, I thought I might jump start your thinking on how to secure IoT during and beyond implementation. It’s been such a looming topic for so many of my clients, I’ve been engaged in discussions about merging my business into a larger search practice. I’ve invested time to understand what kind of individual is needed to secure your enterprise today, and after you implement IoT.

Peter Drucker believed we learn more about the future by looking at the past. I have decided to share what kind of person you need to manage your business in the IoT Age.  Here’s what we know right now. Hacking and damaging your business is being pursued by a small number of nasty, tricky, and terrible people who are focused on not only being disruptive and destructive to your business today, but also into the future. A small number of people leveraging technology can do significant damage to your organization.

So, what’s my answer? What’s the secret of winning this security battle? I hope to learn more at IBM InterConnect. Let me share what I know about the who today while bring back the how and when from my trip to Las Vegas. Let me see if I can help make you the big winner at game of security. Yes, I called it a game, and yes, you must win.  The stakes are too high to lose at this security game.

Today, I identify the qualities you should look for in your IoT security professional. I share the critical element to your security success is not the individual as much as how you put your team together. Cybersecurity and data security is a team sport. The better you are at building the team, the more likely you win, and tie more than you lose. Here are the seven qualities you need in your IoT security professional. We cover them briefly today and return to them after the conference to see what I learn.

The first quality in your IoT security professional is curiosity. Everything is changing so quickly it’s easy to be overrun by information. Your best IoT security professional is curious about what they see. They are always asking questions. They are very good at understanding and working in the unknown.

The second quality in your IoT security professional is they must be a system thinker.  They can look at the big picture of what makes your business work and, sometimes, not work. It is critical that they can look at how systems interrelate to each other and where there may be gaps in between.

The third quality of your IoT security professional is they must be good at communicating with different stakeholders across the organization. They must have a strong ability to provide stakeholders the right information at the best time to lead to a decision. They understand how to create a message or story that makes it possible to build consensus quickly and then act.

The fourth quality of your IoT security professional is they are a problem solver. They prioritize what is happening to solve the problems. They can help create solutions with a wide range of stakeholders to stop what is happening where it is. They can isolate and focus on the critical elements to create a solution to individual and organizational challenges.

The fifth quality of your IoT security professional is they are always learning. They understand that your security threat is always changing. They learn in several ways and they also know other people and resources that can help you during your security crisis. They are constantly building their network of people to help them on a just in time basis.

The sixth quality of a IoT security professional is they are abstract thinkers. They can think both inside and outside the box. They can evaluate challenges from many different perspectives before acting.

The seventh quality of your IoT security professional is they have a facilitative leadership style. They can get information from a wide range of stakeholders while concurrently evaluating what they hear and see to begin creating a potential solution.

The foundational quality of your IoT security professional is they trust and are trusted. We will discuss why trust is the foundation that IoT is built on in next week’s blog. But great IoT security professionals intuitively and analytically know how to build and keep trust with others.

Can you find all these qualities in one individual? I’m not sure, but I hope to find out more next week in my meetings at IBM InterConnect in Las Vegas.

See you next week.