Challenges in technology to meet enterprise needs in 2013 and expectations.

There are pretty much the same challenges with a $100 million dollar company just like the $5 billion dollar company I came from with about the same proportion of IT spend. Take for example security. Any mid-sized organization that feels their size makes them less susceptible to malware threats or even data leakage is fooling themselves. I’m pleased to see the growth in security as a service but think the industry has a long way to go with a lot of opportunities for niche players that cater to my size market. The areas in business environment where solutions do not yet exist or not up to themark, and which if existed, would've made job easier. For me it’s security and data leakage. Penetrating an organization from the inside is relatively simple and very effective. As more and more of our private lives become publically accessible via social media, so do the phishing opportunities which allow someone to gain authorized access to a company’s environment. I call these individuals “trusted intruders” and every organization should fear them. My concern is that everyone thinks they can’t be phished when the fact is, about 15%-25% of the people I target in a pen test fail.

 

My roles & responsibilities as a CIO

Since I’m a relatively new CIO, probably the biggest change is the transition from managing technology to leveraging technology to drive operations. I’ve been fortunate to work for a CIO in my prior organization that not only had a good technology background but could also align our IT strategy to our divisional business goals. I believe the role of a CIO has already changed from being technology focused to one that helps drive business strategy.

 

Technology Trends Impacting Enterprise Business Environment

Big data is the first thing that comes to mind because it will allow my organization to gain customer insights like we’ve never had before. We’ll be able to measure the effectiveness of our services and look for new opportunities to serve our customers better. Cloud and social media are also game changers but there’s still a lot of hype behind the madness and there’s significant security and privacy issues that have yet to be resolved.