IT Security

Future of CIO – The Digital CIO as the Gap Minding Role

CIOs are the gap-minding role as IT is in the unique position to oversee underlying business functions and structures. IT leaders have to look things from all different angles.

Nowadays, information is permeating into every corner of the business and technology is often the disruptive force of digitalization. The CIO is not a static management role, but a dynamic leadership role due to the changing nature of technology and overwhelming growth of information. Especially now more and more enterprises are leveraging IT for revenue-generating initiatives. The IT leader of the future and the exemplars of today must move away from pure IT manager, and become a trustful business partner and an insightful strategist to bridge the gap between IT and business, and between the industrial age and the digital era, The important component of IT leadership success has to do with the definition or scope of the role that the CIO is playing and the profundity of IT leadership influence.

More of the Future of CIO post from Pearl Zhu

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10
Apr 18

CIO.com – To manage GDPR data risk, pay attention to your service level agreements

Your technology suppliers provide a pipe, platform or other web-based application to enable their clients to do business over the Internet. Unless the client has stipulated their security requirements, the supplier is likely to only provide a basic security configuration to ensure they meet their availability obligations.

To be ‘enterprising’ is to be eager to undertake or to attempt. To show initiative and be resourceful. These are leadership traits, so to be enterprising is to lead. ‘Analytics’ is how we use data to inform decision making, in the context of achieving business objectives. These are management practices, so analytics is about management.

‘Enterprising analytics’ is about being creative, resourceful and adventurous with decision making to achieve business objectives. It is about the set of leadership and management practices that need to be in place for an organization to make the most of its analytics investment.

More of the CIO.com article from Rohan Light, CIO

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06
Apr 18

ZDNet – CIO report card: IT must fix basic problems

New research shows that IT continues to struggle with completing basic operational activities to the satisfaction of end-users and business partners. CIOs should examine their departments carefully to see whether house-cleaning and improvements are needed.

An odd, yet interesting, research study from Nintex appeared last week. Titled Definitive Guide to America’s Most Broken Processes, the report asked 1,000 full-time employees to answer these questions:

What are the top broken corporate processes?
Who do employees blame for these broken functions?
How do broken processes impact employee performance and morale?
How can businesses improve internal functions?

More of the ZDNet article from Michael Krigsman

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05
Apr 18

Future of CIO – How to Handle The Buy-in Cycle of Change Management

A digital organization with strong change capability is an environment of growth and letting go, possibilities, chaos, solutions, innovation, and creativity.

Generally speaking, Change Management has very low percentage of success rate due to varying factors such as static mindsets, poor processes or bad timing, etc. The big “WHY” about change is always fundamental because change shouldn’t be for its own sake, it must have a clear business purpose or a progressive goal. From Change Management perspective, handling the buy-in cycle is an important step or the prerequisite for managing a successful change effort effortlessly.

More of Future of CIO post from Pearl Zhu

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04
Apr 18

InformationWeek – IT Leadership: Winning at What Cost?

A key challenge for business and IT leaders is establishing — and evolving — a company culture that balances the need for winning with playing by the rules.

“The victor is the king and the loser is the bandit” is a famous Chinese proverb. Machiavelli’s “The ends justify the means” encompasses the same spirit. In IT, bad behavior survives and thrives because leadership allows it. Some leaders simply look the other way or ignore the behavior because those individuals win or close business deals: In other words, get it done. Winning forgives all manners of sin. How do leaders maintain discipline to their core values while delivering wins?

Winning and sinning: the wrong kind of synergy

Companies establish and center their culture on a code of conduct that highlights their company’s values. Values start skewing when winning comes into play. All for-profit companies strive to make money, grow business, and put competitors out of business. That is the nature of the game.

More of the InformationWeek article from Kong Yang

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03
Apr 18

CIO.com – IT governance critical as cloud adoption soars to 96 percent in 2018

With 81 percent of enterprises operating multi-cloud landscapes and 26 percent spending over $6 million annually on public cloud infrastructure, staying on top has never been harder.

In 2018, cloud computing went mainstream. Virtually all organizations (96 percent) use it in one way or another. However, studies show that as users gain cloud maturity, they tend to move from hybrid cloud scenarios – which comprise both private and public clouds – toward multi-cloud landscapes spread across a multitude of service providers. Indeed, according to Rightscale’s 2018 State of the Cloud Report, 81 percent of enterprises already have a multi-cloud strategy in place.

The Rightscale report highlights that many more enterprises view public cloud adoption as their top priority, up from 29 percent in 2017 to 38 percent in 2018. Hybrid cloud has decreased as a priority, declining from 50 percent in 2017 to 45 percent in 2018.

More of the CIO.com article from Marc Wilczek

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30
Mar 18

InformationWeek – How New Technologies Can Spell Disaster

IT compensation expert David Foote warns that outdated HR models threaten to destroy companies as they try to implement emerging IT concepts.

The warning stirs distant memories of the recessionary year 2008 and the Dotcom bust a few years earlier. So many companies, from startups to one-time Blue Chips, laid off thousands of workers or simply disappeared through bankruptcy or acquisition. Their IT teams, entrenched in dated technologies, went from unemployed to unemployable.

These weren’t layoffs of 10 people but 10,000 at a time. Picture 10,000 people, sort of like a small town, with everyone out of work. Could something similar happen in the near future? David Foote says that is a real possibility, but that there is an opportunity for companies and IT professionals to change their paths.

Foote, founder of IT workforce and compensation research firm Foote Partners, issued an analysis of the company’s Q4 2017 compensation data. On the positive side, the market value for more than 400 IT certifications rose for the first time in four quarters, growing by 0.3%, so that the average certification now represents a 7.6% premium on an IT pro’s base salary. Also on the positive side — for employees and the employers who have to recruit them — Foote says the market volatility that we have seen for many IT skills is calming down a bit.

More of the InformationWeek article from James M. Connolly

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22
Feb 18

Infoworld – SaaS-ifying your enterprise application? A quick-and-dirty guide

Many enterprises see a need to SaaS-enable applications, making them into a product for customers and partners. But most have no clue about what to do.

Lots of people called it SaaS-enablement, some call it SaaS-ification of software. Whatever you call it, more and more enterprises are looking to turn some enterprise application into a SaaS cloud application.

There are several reasons to SaaS-enable an internal application. Enterprises need to expose a software system to their partners and/or customers to better automate the business. Or, they are looking to monetize applications they view as having value to other companies.

Whatever the reasons, there are a few things to consider first. I call this the SaaS-ification reality check:

More of the Infoworld article from David Linthicum

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19
Feb 18

CIO.com – How to be compliant with data breach notification laws

As a CIO, the bucks stops with you for matters pertaining to data breaches and compliance towards subsequent notifications.

Most countries today have stringent laws governing data breach notifications. These laws mandate government, private organizations and individuals who conduct business in any form to disclose any breach of private, confidential customer information by unauthorized third parties.

The penalties for failure to disclose such breaches may be huge. A few years back in the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposed a penalty of close to $10 million against two telecom businesses for holding personally identifiable customer information without adequate security measures. In Australia, the Mandatory Data Breach Notification (MDBN) law stipulates a fine of up to AU$1.8 million on organizations and up to AU$260,000 on individuals who fail to notify customers in case of data breach. For what it’s worth, Australia sees one of the highest number of data breaches in all of APAC.

More of the CIO.com article from Chris Low

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15
Feb 18

InformationWeek – For IT in 2018, Think Change and Change Again

Even with the ongoing new developments in core technologies, IT organizations are facing dramatic changes in how they work in 2018 as they embrace new business concepts and strategies.

We just might be at a point where IT professionals — from the overworked help desk staffer up to the CIO in the fancy office — long for the good old days. You remember those days, when technology, that “T” in IT, ruled the day.

That was when the to-do list was filled with tasks such as configuring hardware, testing compatibility of software packages, upgrading databases, responding to “stupid user” complaints, and fighting to keep hackers out of a system. Even the move to the cloud often was a bits and bytes and connections challenge. Today, a whole new layer of IT complexity has landed on top of all those pure tech issues.

More of the Information Week article from James M. Connolly

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.