Key issues keeping CIOs and IT professionals up at night in 2015 include downtime, security and IT talent acquisition.
The findings from a recent survey by Sungard AS are particularly relevant to the South African market, and local ICT specialist Quintica warns that socio-economic issues such as load shedding, a less than buoyant local economy and the increasing brain drain, are not providing much solace to our own CIOs.
“With the increasing frequency and complexity of cyber-attacks it comes as no surprise that security ranked as a top concern in the workplace for CIOs, and according to the survey by Sungard AS over half of respondents believe that security planning should be the last item on the agenda to receive budget cuts in 2015,” says Ingo Tuschardt, MD of Quintica.
Accordingly, although external security threats are front of mind for IT professionals, internal threats are often the roots cause of security related violations. Almost two-thirds of respondents cited leaving mobile phones and laptops in vulnerable places as their chief security concern (62%), followed by password sharing (59%).
Internal threats boil down to actions by company employees that could cause a real disaster or even the total outage of a critical service, which is where the real “threat” lies. It is these types of risks which led to 60% of survey respondents noting that in 2015 they would implement stricter security policies for employees, Tuschardt says. Security is vital, not only can a breach harm a company’s reputation but also prove costly.
“Remember, downtime will cost your organisation money and it may cost a business its reputation,” he says. “And now with Eskom’s regular load shedding local companies are facing even greater risks of downtime. In fact just to keep the lights on from day to day is becoming a massive challenge, and that is before we even consider the hazards and dangers of what potentially disastrous downtime caused by security threats can do to your business.”
Two out of five of the survey respondents (42%) consider the testing of their disaster recovery plans vital to their organisations and also among the last line items that should be cut from 2015 IT budgets. Disaster recovery testing dramatically reduces downtime by about 75% for enterprises deemed “best-in-class” in disaster recovery and business continuity.
The bottom line is that today’s CIO is, or should be, more concerned with business resiliency and what the overall impact a glitch in the system or a spate of unplanned or forced downtime will land up costing an organisation reputationally as well as financially.
Another key area of concern for the CIO is the acquisition and retention of the right kind of human capital. Accordingly the need for IT professionals with the talent and skills to do the job well will continue to present a challenge for the technology sector in 2015. This worry comes in third place with 38% of respondents indicating that they are in fact concerned about talent acquisition.
Despite this being a top concern for CIOs, 50% of respondents believe talent acquisition and retention is often overlooked. In fact talent acquisition ranked higher than any other overlooked IT issue in the workplace including data centre expansion, shadow IT and others.
“If we relate these areas closer to home, we can unequivocally agree that information security, downtime avoidance and talent acquisition are as key to our local CIOs. How can they overcome it? The only way to combat it is to firstly be cognisant of it and secondly to be ensure that proper planning and preparation are in place. Only then with CIOs and IT professionals be able to stay ahead of the game in 2015 and ultimately get a proper night’s rest,” says Tuschardt.
