ON SECURITY AND DATA MANAGEMENT

CIO: Wal-Mart has built the company in large part on its efficient supply chain and inventory management. All of that is driven by, and dependent on, the flow of information. Because of the potential impact of an event like September 11 on this flow, are you doing anything differently in business continuity planning or disaster recovery?

Turne: Unfortunately, we are doing things differently as a result of September 11, and I say unfortunately because we're investing a lot of money, resources and time in security, privacy and similar activities. Things that were once objectives and goals are now a way of life. That's really the transition that's happened for us since 9/11. We're going to be burdened with it for quite some time. I'd really like to see our technology vendors step up and help us with these vulnerabilities because the money that we're pouring into security right now is being pulled away from development and strategic things that we could be investing in. A lot of the vulnerabilities that we deal with are preventable and could be avoided if the technology vendors would get proactive and do the due diligence to tighten up their products.

CIO: In security, companies typically spend maybe 20 per cent on prevention and 80 per cent on recovery or dealing with problems after the fact. Have you shifted the amount you spend into prevention?

Turner: I'd say we're spending 80 per cent on prevention right now. Necessity is the mother of invention, and we've invested a lot of knowledge and capital in intrusion detection and playing as much offence as we can to make sure that we're protecting our company. Personally, every day I spend time on security.

CIO: With the Enron and Wall Street scandals, we've seen how important it is to know how the data that's driving the company is being handled, managed and monitored. How do you treat this responsibility?

Turner: My job as the chief information officer for Wal-Mart is to bring visibility to all of our information, to eliminate the blind spots, to not wait to be asked to develop controls and balances but to be the champion for the information. In the last 10 years, the driver of change has transitioned from technology to information. Technology at this point is simply a means to an end. What is really strategic is the use of the information and how we exploit and maximise it. We're in a business that competes at the speed of information, and my job is to ensure we present it in such a way that we use it to drive execution and improvements in our business.