Current research has projected that as many as 3.3 million white-collar jobs of all kinds and over $136 billion in wages will be moved from the United States to lower cost, offshore locations by 2015. Although the initial emphasis has been on routine service and technical support positions, the trend is expanding to include more complex engineering and design services. It is abundantly clear that many of the jobs being sent offshore were formerly held by U.S. engineers, computer scientists and other information technology professionals. .
A major concern with outsourcing is the potential for security breaches. Some feel that sending this sensitive material abroad could result in high-security information ending up in the wrong hands. This could cause serious security issues, particularly if it is material vital to national security. Security concerns extend beyond those companies working on advanced R&D that is aimed at creating the next big thing. Others that maintain networks, databases and other internal systems are also concerned about confidentiality, especially if their outsourcing partners are working with rivals. Even though many technology makers and IT departments staff offshore operations with their own people, the link to headquarters can become across oceans. High-level data that was once closely guarded within headquarters begins to stream across continents and onto the hard drives of overseas workers.
Another security issue deals with connection type. The risk is that in their haste to get outsourcing projects up and running in a short time, they use what connections to the outsourcing provider that is already in place, usually dial-up connections. These connections are quite vulnerable to hackers and the like. Most service providers will recommend that companies upgrade to a VPN (Virtual Private Network), but most do not, because the extra cost of training for their firewall administrators, the upgrading of the firewall software, the testing time on the firewall and logistics of distributing the VPN client software to different organizations? laptops is prohibitive.
