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Three IT Workplace Issues Preventing CIOs from Sleeping Easy

By Ric Jones

No, the term CIO doesn’t stand for “career is over.” But you can’t blame chief information
officers for occasionally feeling, well, stressed as they deal with the threat of cybercrime, the
Cloud, budgetary restraints, increasing business unit demands and data recovery.

No wonder that 91 percent of those responding to CIO magazine’s “State of the CIO” report
described their jobs as “more challenging” as they struggle with shifting expectations and
responsibilities.

So what, in particular, is keeping CIOs up at night? A recent survey of 276 U.S. CIOs and
executive IT professionals commissioned by Sungard Availability Services revealed three
workplace issues in particular that trigger insomnia. They are security, downtime and talent
acquisition. Let’s consider each separately.

Security

Security ranks highest among IT concerns, reflecting the increasing frequency and complexity of
cyber attacks. For a growing number of CIOs and their companies, it’s not a matter of “if” a data
breach occurs, but “when.” As a result, 51 percent of CIOs believe budgets for security planning
should be the last item to be trimmed.

While cyber criminals worry CIOs, they recognize that internal threats often are the root cause
of security disasters. Sixty-two percent of surveyed CIOs cited leaving mobile phones or laptops
in vulnerable places as their chief security concern, followed by password sharing (59 percent).
Sixty percent say they are enforcing stricter security policies for employees this year.

The bottom line: As much as you try to protect your organization from outside threats with the
most advanced technology, users still must be responsible for their own and the company’s
security; they’re the first line of defense, especially against phishing and similar breach
attempts. And a 2015 priority: educating users to help them change their behavior and stick with
compliance on security best practices.

Downtime

Very simply, downtime damages reputations – and costs money. An IDC study released in
February put the average total cost of unplanned application downtime per year at $1.25 billion
to $2.5 billion for the Fortune 1000. The average hourly cost of an infrastructure failure is
$100,000 per hour. And for a critical app failure, it’s $500,000 to $1 million per hour.

This explains why 42 percent of CIOs consider their disaster recovery plans to be vital to their
organizations and also should be among the last line items cut from IT budgets.

23 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – May 2015 Edition
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