Mapping Security: The Corporate Security Sourcebook For Today's Global Economy

Chapter 17. Mapping Culture

In the world of cross-border security, it is easy to overlook and marginalize its softer side. Most would rather focus on the differences in the allowable encryption key lengths or the specific laws governing storage and backup of customer data. In each of the 30 countries I highlighted in this book, however, consulting with local experts along the way, the most critical success factor that they insisted on was getting the new culture “right.” Culture cannot be measured precisely, and it is not as quantifiable as core infrastructure or numbers of regulations. Data cannot be extrapolated from a computer, and it doesn’t necessarily allow for rules that can be automatically popped into a policy. Often this is why it is ...