ranging from malware-infected motherboards, to information theft from a leading cloud provider, to the manipulation of the underlying routing tables of the Internet. At the same time, the regulatory environment around sensitive data protection has become more rigorous, divers and complex. Organisations are aware of the shifting threat profile and are working to deal with technical barriers as well as sophisticated criminal elements. Incidents are increasingly originating in the trust vector – due to inadvertent employee behaviour via the sites they visit, the posts they access on social media sites or even the devise they bring with them to the workplace.
Cyber Intelligence represents a sophisticated and full set of threat management tactics, providing tools to move to a more proactive ‘over the horizon’ threat awareness posture. Cyber Analytics look to detect patterns across systems, networks, physical security logs and external cyber-threat intelligence analysis to predict future attacks. Cyber Forensics is moving beyond root-cause analysis to include tracking of where attacks came from, and detailed tracing of what they were doing after the infiltration. Cyber Logistics adopts and outside-in view of security, protecting against compromises in the value chain – from upstream suppliers to personnel sourcing. And Cyber Security remains a key component – creating identity, access and control frameworks to safeguard assets, while embedding enforcement policies and procedures throughout the organisation.
CIOs shift from stewards of, to catalysts
for Revolutionaries. For years, technology advocates have called for CIOs to take a seat at the executive table. But the subtext has typically been as a steward of the business. This played well in the paradigm of IT as a support function
and cost centre, working downstream from the business strategy. The focus was on automating what the business needed to do. More recently, companies have invested in automating what the business needs to know, increasing the visibility of information as a critical strategic asset for decision, action and even direct monetisation.
In 2011, CIOs need to be more than business stewards, and potentially more than strategists as well. That is because cloud, social computing and mobility are fundamentally disruptive capabilities, shaking up business models and transforming how business is done. Indeed, the technology agenda is the business agenda, and CIOs are the executives positioned to pull them into alignment. In addition, the next-generation workforce has radically different abilities and expectations regarding information. They demand and deserve the tools to work effectively, usually in collaboration and not normally at a desk or in and office. That said, CIOs cannot rise to these new roles without demonstrating their ability to ‘mind the store’. And even then, yesterday’s pressures will not go away. CIOs are still expected to control costs in traditional IT service areas. But those who can help the business to channel disruptive technologies can move beyond business strategist, translating innovations into meaningful contributions to the bottom line, creating aggressive plans to the future and leading the change.
Every few years we see deadlines with proclamations of ERP’s imminent demise. In the current world, the more proper description is probably Enterprise Applications. Over the years the impact of enterprise application players like SAP and Oracle has grown substantially, well beyond automating core back-office processes. This growth was achieved first by tackling the front-office functions like customer service,
December 2011 | Management Today 61
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