Kristin Lovejoy, IBM's VP of IT risk, isn't most people.

"That much complexity creates more risk," says Lovejoy. "We had to do this in order to decrease risk throughout the organization, even though it meant replacing solutions that may have worked perfectly well for a particular unit." Before she could do that, she had to transform the IT risk function at IBM. When she was named to her post in 2010, IT risk was focused on security, business continuity and disaster recovery. Its priorities were mostly driven by compliance or crisis mitigation. "We were sort of the department of 'no,'" she says. "We were always telling people why they couldn't do things." Lovejoy, with the support of then-CIO Pat Toole and his successor Jeanette Horan, knew that had to change. The department had to become one that enabled business innovation, not blocked it. "Instead of focusing on defense, let's think about business transformation and processes," says Lovejoy. "Our job is to think through the worst possible scenarios and create plans to overcome them so projects can move ahead."