data resilience
Drive change
With peer-to-peer transactions
and vast data sets at the heart of
Blockchain, business continuity and
data resilience are therefore essential.
It might even be the Cinderella
of the IT department, helping to
achieve a key business functional
requirement. So how can CEO and
CFOs drive change, or should they
work collaboratively with CIOs? From
a business and technological point
of view, change has to increasingly
begin with CIOs developing a
business case for it. So here are a
few tips to consider:
Make transformative technologies
be part of the organisation’s future
strategy. Look how Amazon changed
the way we buy, and how Netflix
altered how we watch movies, how
payment systems are driving cash out
of our pockets and into our phones.
Gain recognition by using
technology to demonstrably drive
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and create value that can be
added to the bottom line, enabling
the organisation to expand. By
demonstrating value they will gain
the support of chief financial officers
(CFOs) and other senior executives.
If they are unable to demonstrate
value, their ability to innovate will be
adversely affected.
Encourage and participate in
collective responsibility throughout
the C-Suite. With the growth of
digitalisation, the ransomware
incidents at the two hospitals show
why every organisation should be
concerned with protecting their
data. The C-Suite as a whole should
therefore prioritise data security and
data recovery to ensure that they
can retrieve data quickly whenever
either a human created disaster or a
natural one threatens the ability of the
organisation to continue to operate.
Don’t become complacent.
It’s quite easy with fault tolerant
hardware to become complacent,
rather than to recognise that the risks
and technologies are ever changing.
Networks, for example, remain
vulnerable to air gaps and distance
issues that create latency and
packet loss. The CIO agenda should
therefore consider how data is going
to be safely transmitted and received,
at speed, by mitigating the effects of
latency. A service continuity, business
continuity and recovery plan is
therefore essential.
Communicate effectively to enable
the C-Suite to fully understand the
current CIO agenda and consider
what else can lead to lost time and
lost revenue. It should also be borne
in mind that Twitter offers a charter
for those that wish to complain about
an organisation, and it can lead to a
rapid dissemination of unfavourable
information that could cause a
damaged reputation.
Remember that data resilience
is about protecting your organisation
by enabling it to access and exploit
data to allow it to prosper. This is
why CFOs, CMOs and CEOs should
work with CIOs to ensure they have
technologies in place.
Don’t forget that driving change is
a positive way forward to establishing
market competitiveness and
differentiation. After all, it’s better
to disrupt those that would like to
disrupt you, and it’s better to act
now to prevent human made and
natural disasters from impeding your
business and service continuity. CIOs
therefore need to clearly explain their
agenda in order to help CEOs and
CFOs to understand the importance
of investing in data security, in
back up and restore as well as in
transformative technologies. With the
importance of data increasing, your
firm will need them.