Who’d be a CIO? The role has never been more demanding, nor more fraught with complexity. Yet all too often that role, in its present guise, is much misunderstood by those outside of the realms in which CIOs now move. Anyone who thinks back to what was asked of a CIO just a few years ago might think the demands of the job, while challenging, haven’t changed that much. They would be wrong.
First and foremost, the threat landscape has itself altered dramatically of late, with consumers subject to constant spear phishing attacks, while both public and private organisations are hard pressed at every turn to protect their biggest asset, information. How bad has the threat level become? To answer that, you need look no further than the recent slew of web vulnerabilities such as Heartbleed or ‘Shellshock’ that made headlines globally. The repercussions of these within the business environment are likely to be felt for some time, as criminals seek out the most susceptible servers and subject them to concerted attacks.
Today’s CIO not only has to ensure the business is protected at all turns, but equally must play a key role as a strategic business advisor. However, that role is not always recognised and embraced as it might be at boardroom level – something that needs to change, if the CIO is to fulfil that role to its fullest and deliver greatest value to the organisation.
Connecting IT and presenting innovative IT projects to the CEO or CFO must now be done in a way that ensures a balanced approach to risk management is achieved. The IT department has traditionally been averse to risk, while a business and its leaders need to embrace risk to be successful. Their mutual positions need not only to be recognised and respected, but seen as the fulcrum on which the well-being of the business is balanced.
In today’s digital world, when it comes to cloud and the vast quantity of data now being stored, there are a number of critical factors for a CIO and the wider business to consider, in order for them to work effectively together. Data residency across EMEA is going to become a more prevalent discussion and here we are helping a number of customers to create their own processes, based on best industry practice.
Knowing where your data is before you start (or redesign) cloud strategies is simple to say, but hard to achieve. CIOs tell us that, while they know that half of their stored data is redundant, they just don’t know which half. That is why being a CIO today has moved to new realms; where protecting the business is paramount, in the face of ever-growing threats, yet the means to do so is not always clearly part of the corporate strategy.
We are currently seeing two complications: data explosion and data duplication. Data is growing to the tune of 100-200% year on year, and we’re seeing that up to 70% of data can be duplicated. As a huge amount of money is being spent on storing and backing up that data, the Internet of Things is only going to make this duplication issue more problematic.
With information today’s currency – the lifeblood of an organisation – the determination of cyber criminals to target and exploit will continue to rise. As a highly valuable commodity, the CIO needs to have a clear understanding as to what information is valuable to his organisation, if he is to be in a position to protect that data. Delivering this discussion and communicating it in business language is vital in breaking down the boundaries between IT and the board.