Neil McAllister
What better way to kick off a blog about business software than to talk one of the most significant business productivity applications out there? Sometimes it seems like we writers spend entire days inside our word processors. But for the majority of you, I'm betting you might as well be married to Microsoft Excel.
A good spreadsheet is a powerful tool, but like anything, you can overdo it. It's like the old carpenter's adage: When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. In my time as an IT manager, I saw employees trying to use Excel for everything from storing complex databases to typing up entire reports, complete with fancy formatting. Often they would claim it was easier for them to shoehorn an inappropriate task into Excel than to learn a new program for the job.
It sounds harmless enough, but misuse of Excel may be more serious than you think. According to risk analysis firm Protiviti, productivity isn't all you stand to lose. Using Excel for tasks Microsoft never intended can actually open your company to alarming security risks.
The problem lies in how Excel applications are developed at most businesses. Programmers who build robust network-enabled software are trained to recognize potential security risks and minimize the chance of catastrophic errors. The business managers and other employees who code Excel macros, on the other hand, often have only enough knowledge to be dangerous (as engineers are fond of saying).
When an amateur Excel spreadsheet is only running on a user's local desktop, the danger is minimal. Connect that spreadsheet to a mission-critical application like a networked ERP system, however, and alarm bells should start ringing. Unfortunately, too few companies recognize the risk before things start breaking down.
Let's not forget that Excel itself is hardly a battle-hardened, secure application. Microsoft's most recent Office updates patched a security hole in Excel that attackers had been exploiting since January. Unfortunately, the same patch introduced a bug that causes Excel to miscalculate the results of certain kinds of macros. So while Excel is by no means the least secure piece of the Microsoft Office portfolio (that would be Outlook), it's not without blemish, either.
How are you using Excel in your business? Is it still just a spreadsheet, or have you shaped it into something more? How far do you think it can bend before it breaks? And is Microsoft doing enough to make security a top priority for its millions of Excel users? Sound off in the comments.
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