Some single-platform advocates argue that the IT costs of running multiple operating systems make it problematic to run a mixed environment. Maybe so. But these people have a short-term view of cost. The costs of a security breach are far greater. The University of Maryland estimates that when a public company suffers a single security breach, its market capitalization drops 5 percent. Would you want to tell the board of directors not to worry because the company saved some of that shareholder value in IT support costs through your single-platform strategy?

Business = Risk

Every business faces risk the moment it opens its doors. IT's job is to keep the risk to information at a minimum. Hoping for one solution -- the security silver bullet -- isn't realistic. The one-way approach has proved to be a security liability when implemented as a uniform platform strategy.

Given how valuable information is to a company, Evalubase's Caffarra says it might be time to put corporate data on a company's balance sheet as an asset. If that happened, maybe the board would insist that the very best tools and methodologies be applied to decrease the risk to that information. And that the very best strategy isn't to put all your eggs in one basket.

Mark Hall is a Computerworld editor at large. Contact him at mark_hall@computerworld.com.