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After years of prioritizing digital transformation and focusing on innovation, many CIOs are reporting that their No. 1 goal now is supporting operational efficiency.

CIO.com’s 2023 State of the CIO report, its 22nd such annual survey, showed that more CIOs today are seeing improved operational efficiency as the top imperative.

Some 45% of respondents listed “increasing operational efficiency” as a business need driving their IT agenda, propelling it to the top spot on the list of business initiatives driving IT budgets today, besting other critical business needs such as increasing cybersecurity protections, furthering transformation, and even improving profitability.

But IT leaders say there a host of other business needs shaping IT initiatives today that are not only nearly as important as driving operational efficiency but are frequently supportive of it.

That’s what Matt Mead, CTO of the technology modernization firm SPR, sees in the market.

“Driving efficiency is very much on everyone’s minds,” he says, while quickly adding that CIOs are investing in technologies that help them address multiple business needs. He cites automation as a case in point, noting that the technology can transform processes as well as improve customer and employee experiences, all while creating more efficient operations. Cloud migrations and data analytics projects do much the same, Mead says.

Top 15 business needs driving IT spend

The State of the CIO survey asked 837 IT leaders and 201 line-of-business (LOB) participants a range of questions regarding their current and future IT strategies, with 56% reporting that they expected their overall IT budgets to increase this year. In terms of business initiatives driving their IT spending this year, the top 15 enterprise needs are:

Increasing operational efficiency: 45%

Increasing cybersecurity protections: 44%

Transforming existing business processes: 38%

Improving the customer experience: 36%

Improving profitability: 27%

Increasing employee productivity: 25%

New product development: 22%

Increasing topline revenue for the business: 20%

Developing new digital revenue streams: 19%

Improving/optimizing the employee experience: 19%

Enhancing hybrid work technologies: 18%

Improving talent acquisition/retention: 17%

Meeting compliance requirements: 16%

Monetizing company data: 14%

Adhering to environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards: 11%

The top portion of this year’s list varies from last year’s findings in notable ways, with increasing cybersecurity protections having been the top business need driving IT budgets in 2022, followed by increasing operational efficiency, improving customer experience, transforming existing business processes, improving employee productivity, and improving profitability.

The shifts suggest that a portion of enterprises are moving on somewhat from last year’s protection posture in favor of revamping business processes and increasing efficiencies, and that the pandemic’s lens on employee productivity is giving way to an eye on profitability as economic headwinds rise.

Business pressures drive IT

Multiple CIOs across various industries say their IT agendas line up with the State of the CIO Report findings.

Woody Groton, the CIO for Draper, a nonprofit research and development organization, until April 2023, says the IT strategy he had put in place is a testament to that.

“Operational efficiency and profitability and productivity all tie into the business pressures we’re all seeing,” he says, adding CIOs continue to hear calls for IT to help reduce costs and drive efficiencies. “There’s a renewed focus on all this; that’s something I’m experiencing.”

But Groton says the pressure for operational efficiency isn’t about identifying technologies that can help slash costs — as had been the case in the past. Instead, the imperative is to determine how IT can improve operational efficiency while also meeting other key business needs, such as transforming processes and improving customer and employee experiences, he says.

The IT plans Gorton had implemented for 2023 at Draper called for moving the company from an on-prem ERP system to a software-as-a-service option; Groton says such a move enables business units to update existing business processes, with the expectation that the company will enjoy both transformation and improved operational efficiency as a result.

Groton’s IT strategy called for moving other systems to the cloud to gain efficiencies, spur additional process transformations, and boost the company’s cybersecurity posture — all top business priorities at Draper that correspond to the CIO.com research findings.

Automation efforts, such as robotic process automation (RPA), and implementing software with built-in AI capabilities are other key initiatives, given their ability to shift workers away from mundane time-consuming tasks to higher-value activities, thereby generating further efficiencies and improved user experiences, Groton says.

As Draper CIO, Groton also focused on meeting the company’s push for maturing its cybersecurity posture. To that end, Draper adopted a zero-trust security model, with IT implementing various technologies, such as network detection and response (NDR) software to support that defense-in-depth strategy.

Draper’s continuing drive to maximize its use of data also meant more investments in business intelligence and analytics tools, Groton says, while its ongoing hybrid work environment necessitates ongoing investments in technologies that support and improve both worker experience and productivity.

Max Horne, CIO and senior vice president of Colonial Savings in Texas, has a similar list of business objectives to fulfill. He specifically listed operational efficiency, cybersecurity, and “projects that can help us bring more business in” as top drivers at Colonial.

Maturing the bank’s data and analytics program and improving customer experience are also top business objectives today, Horne says, noting, however, that these items are perennial priorities, with their rankings on the priority list changing mainly based on fluctuations in economic and business conditions.

“I find my project portfolio has always had those things in it,” Horne says.

Addressing multiple business at once

Other research shows a similar list of business imperatives shaping the IT agenda this year.

The IT Priorities: 2023 report, conducted by research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan for tech company GoTo, surveyed 1,000 IT decision-makers and found that growing revenue was the No. 1 business objective for the year and that 83% of surveyed organizations intended to achieve that growth by acquiring more customers. Improving operational efficiencies was second on the list of business objectives, followed by reducing costs and increasing customer satisfaction.

Meanwhile, Snow Software’s 2023 IT Priorities Report found that reducing IT costs topped the list, followed by reducing security risks, delivering digital transformation, adopting new technologies to improve day-to-day operations, and driving company growth.

CIOs say they’re working to collectively address those multiple and often overlapping needs.

That’s the case for James Pennington, vice president, CIO, and HIPAA security officer at Southwell, a nonprofit healthcare system in Georgia.

He lists the business need to accelerate growth, strengthen the workforce, and reduce expenses as his top drivers for IT spending. He also cites the Southwell’s commitment to safety and quality as a top business need shaping IT today.

“As with most of the healthcare provider market, we are struggling to rebound to pre-pandemic volumes and revenue. Most of our technology initiatives are based on tangible ROI and/or maximization of our legacy investments. As such, our strategy centers around innovative solutions leveraging key strategic vendors in order to capitalize value,” he says.

Micha Albertijn, CIO of Meat&More, a vertically integrated Belgium-based company that incorporates food production and processing as well as distribution and retail activities, says he, too, is working to meet multiple business needs of near equal importance.

First, Meat&More is pushing for operational excellence. “The more efficient and effective our processes are, the better our company is running,” Albertijn says. “This can be translated to how we offer digital solutions to our employees and customers and vendors.”

The other two main drivers are becoming more customer-centric and containing spending, which means benchmarking activities from a financial point of view and working to “right size” in terms of budget, he says.

IT is working on various initiatives to support those business imperatives, with several IT projects delivering value in all three areas, Albertijn says, pointing to his team’s work with the sales and marketing department on data-driven know-your-customer projects, which help Meat&More be more customer-centric while supporting top-line growth and efficient use of marketing and sales spend.

“A topic that was already high on our agenda before my arrival but today is even far higher on the agenda is cybersecurity,” Albertijn adds. “We feel due to circumstances and also due to recent events that cybersecurity is asking for far more attention.”

Consequently, he and his IT team are spending more resources in that area, with money going to improving the team’s security skills and implementing next-generation security tools such as those that use AI to deliver more effective threat detection and response.

Focusing on the enterprise mission

CIOs say such intense focus on business needs — and aligning IT spending and the overall IT strategy to them — has become critical for enterprise success.

Bryan Kennedy, director of museum technology and digital operations at the Science Museum of Minnesota, speaks to that point, saying that the museum’s executive team is focused on “using technology to drive forward its mission.”

For Kennedy, that means investing in technologies such as automation and AI-based tools to streamline operations with an eye toward delivering efficiencies — echoing a familiar refrain.

It also means moving more workloads to the cloud, which is both helping the museum to transform processes while also cutting costs. And it means investing in data and analytics to help the museum become more data-driven — with the goal of using those insights to understand where it can grow and how it can move further into the digital space.

At the same time, Kennedy — like his CIO colleagues in other industries — says he has seen his business-side colleagues become more committed to maturing the museum’s cybersecurity posture. Kennedy has invested in various security technologies — including a password management tool and cloud access security brokers — as he moves the institute to a zero-trust security model.

Kennedy’s priorities mirror other findings in the 2023 State of the CIO survey, which noted that CIOs this year anticipate their involvement to increase in cybersecurity (70%), data analysis (55%), data privacy (55%), AI/machine learning (55%), and customer experience (53%).

The study further found that most respondents (77%) believe the visibility of the CIO role will continue to be elevated within their organizations. Already, 38% of LOB respondents consider the CIO as a strategic advisor who proactively identifies business needs and opportunities with another 25% viewing the CIO as a consultant who is evaluating and advising on business needs and technology choices.

Budget, Budgeting, Business IT Alignment, IT Leadership, Technology Industry

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According to a PwC report, one in three consumers (32%) say they will walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience. Unlike personal relationships, loyalty in the consumer world can be surprisingly transitory. This gets worse in the digital world where it takes just a few clicks and minutes to uninstall one app and replace it with a competitor’s app. There are similarities between how loyalty is formed in the physical and digital world. It all boils down to two things – how you feel about that relationship and how much time you are investing in it.

Deliver Delightful Customer Experiences

156. That’s the number of apps I’ve installed on my mobile phone. On any given day, I will be using at least 10% of them. And out of these, my favourite app is a local banking app. It’s one app that I feel was designed just for me. It’s completely intuitive, allows me to perform most tasks in less than 3 clicks, has all the functions that I need to perform banking on-the-go, is constantly updated with new features, comes with great performance and stability and most of all is very secure. These are what I’d refer to as key ingredients to provide delightful customer experiences.

A great amount of design thinking goes into building such modern apps that deliver intuitive user experiences. A pod-based team structure can be set up where you have all the stakeholders responsible for delivering the app. There needs to be strong alignment amongst all the stakeholders ranging from the software developer, the product manager, line of business all the way to the quality engineer. Everyone should know what they are delivering, why they are delivering and how they will be delivering.

Leveraging the right set of technologies will be a key success criterion for such apps. The app should adopt a cloud native architecture to ensure agility, scalability, and resilience. Security should be incorporated from the earliest stages of app development to minimize risk, time, and costs. These best practices coupled with a sound design thinking approach can help enhance customer experience and as a result improve loyalty.

Elevate Customer Engagement

Another way to measure loyalty in the digital world is by the amount of time consumers are using an app. App engagement time is crucial as it influences revenues through ads, spendings, as well as consumer data that can be monetized in the future. To maximize engagement and app-stickiness, companies are increasingly introducing more revenue-generating offerings within their apps. To that end, we’ve seen the rise of the one-app-to-rule-them-all aka a Superapp. Some of the well-known Superapps in Asia are household names e.g., Grab, Gojek, WeChat and PayTM. Grab for example started out as a ride-hailing app. Today its offerings include deliveries, mobility, financial services among others. Gartner anticipates that Superapps will be one of the top 10 strategic technology trends for 2023.

A major downside of a Superapp is that if compromised due to security vulnerabilities in the app’s code, a malware in its libraries, or a configuration error, it can become the-one-key-to-access-them-all for bad actors. It can be a free pass to not just tamper with, but also exfiltrate all types of sensitive consumer data. According to a McKinsey report, 71% of consumers said they would stop doing business with a company if it gave away sensitive data without permission.

To tackle this data privacy issue, all data exchanges within a Superapp should be encrypted. In addition, we should also perform real time monitoring of sensitive data leaks such as credit cards, and other personal identifiable information (PII).

Engage a Trusted Partner

To build customer loyalty in the digital world, businesses need to delight customers and keep them engaged. Leveraging cloud-native architectures, incorporating sound security and data privacy practices, and using design thinking methodology will be instrumental in building modern, secure, and engaging apps. In addition, it will also be important to engage the right technology partner who can support you on this journey.

For the past 30 years, SUSE has been helping customers realize their business goals through transformative and cutting-edge open-source technologies.

Rancher Prime is an industry leading platform that helps companies roll out scalable and resilient cloud native and container-based apps across a distributed IT landscape. It empowers DevOps teams to build and deploy modern apps and updates in a rapid and automated manner.SUSE NeuVector protects apps from bad actors throughout its software lifecycle from development to production environments. It helps security teams implement zero trust controls for apps that may be running in a distributed environment. NeuVector also comes with advanced preventive threat capabilities to prevent data loss in real time.

Learn more at this link: Rancher by SUSE.

SUSE

Vishal Ghariwala is the Senior Director & CTO, APJ and Greater China for SUSE, a global leader in true open source solutions. In this capacity, he engages with customer and partner executives across the region, and is responsible for growing SUSE’s mindshare by being the executive technical voice to the market, press, and analysts. He also has a global charter with the SUSE Office of the CTO to assess relevant industry, market and technology trends and identify opportunities aligned with the company’s strategy.

Prior to joining SUSE, Vishal was the Director for Cloud Native Applications at Red Hat where he led a team of senior technologists responsible for driving the growth and adoption of the Red Hat OpenShift, API Management, Integration and Business Automation portfolios across the Asia Pacific region. Before that, he spent a significant amount of time with leading middleware vendors such as IBM, ILOG and Intalio, as well as the public sector.

Vishal has over 20 years of experience in the Software industry and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Vishal is here on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vishalghariwala/

Application Security, Mobile Development

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Even as cloud spend is set to grow at a CAGR of 16.9% and surpass $1.3 trillion by 2025, the transformation journey is riddled with challenges, such as security, governance, compliance, economics, and resourcing. A cloud center of excellence (CoE) in an enterprise can make a big difference in the return on cloud investments.

Cloud CoE adoption has increased from 69% in 2017 to 82% in 2021, demonstrating its role in value creation. To work effectively, CoE transformation must rest on four key pillars — innovation, advocacy, scale, and governance — that can accelerate cloud adoption throughout an enterprise.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Besides technology expertise and contextual knowledge, every successful cloud CoE revolves around these five tenets:

Being relevant: A cloud CoE must stay relevant by bringing a convergence between the long-term objectives (top-down) and immediate priorities (bottom-up), leading to a strong foundation that supports future strategy and mitigates risk and rework.

Staying connected: A cloud CoE must seek representation and involvement from across the business to improve buy-in and compliance.

Building a strong team: Various skills, ranging from cloud experts to business specialists, are required for the effective functioning of cloud CoE.

Innovating continuously: A cloud CoE must invest time and resources to identify digital capabilities to innovate and build ecosystems of the future.

Transforming culture: A cloud CoE must engage the security and risk groups within an organization to understand the hybrid landscape and ensure the identification and mitigation of risks.

Learn more about cloud-driven business agility on Microsoft Cloud with this case study from TCS.

Cloud Computing

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Bayer is using drones to collect farming data across 80 million acres and satellite data to predict soil moisture down to the square meter. These are just two examples in a transformation that is impacting every part of the business and all 100,000 employees, as undertaken under the helm of Bijoy Sagar, the multinational’s chief information technology and digital transformation officer.

I recently had a chance to discuss Bayer’s tiered approach to digital transformation with Sagar, as well as the IT chief’s thoughts on ramping up digital literacy in the C-suite and the determining the right time to disrupt your legacy business. On the heels of one of the largest cloud transformations in Europe, Sagar has Bayer on track for a highly digital future. Following are excerpts from that conversation.

Martha Heller: How would you describe Bayer’s digital transformation?

Bijoy Sagar: We have three tiers of digital transformation. The first is building new business models. For example, we have a new digital farming business with drones that cover 80 million acres and collect a tremendous amount of data. We have our own access to satellite data, so we can predict within one square meter the moisture and content of soil, and we use those algorithms to plant crops.

We are also collaborating with Microsoft to build an open platform marketplace in the crop world. This will allow us to develop new solutions for farming operations, manufacturing, supply chain, and sustainable sourcing,

The second tier is digitizing our internal processes, and transforming HR, finance, and R&D to support our new digital platform businesses. We have hundreds of data scientists embedded in the company, who are working on algorithms to automate internal processes. This work is directly tied to our Global Business Services strategy so that we get maximum leverage out of our scale.

The third tier, which might be the least glamorous, is to create the infrastructure to support these new digital businesses and processes. This quarter, we are kicking off an all-cloud SAP 4/HANA implementation that will bring more than 100 ERP instances down to two.

In addition to the all-cloud ERP, what architectural decisions are you making?

We are driving an architecture strategy to move everything to one single middleware platform, and we are creating an API-first ecosystem, because new digital businesses cannot run on old plumbing.

With cybersecurity, we are implementing zero trust across the board. Countries are changing their rules on personal data, and I believe the internet is heading to ‘splinternet.’ How do you build a network architecture that works in the splinternet? These architectural elements are a part of our digital transformation journey.

How is the digital business different from the legacy business?

We have disrupted our traditional supply chain model by moving it online and changing it to a subscription model. The new model is more predictable and has healthier margins. But to make a platform business model work, you must be a market leader. If you are building a platform business in undifferentiated product areas, the consumer will not be interested enough. You need to establish market primacy before you disrupt your traditional business.

What was your playbook for developing these digital businesses?

The first was getting our leadership to speak the same digital language. We partnered with a business school to take our leaders through a three-week course, so that we could have productive, collaborative discussions about digital risk and opportunity. That was playbook rule number one, and it took some time.

The second was defining the business model. Should it be a brand-new direct-to-consumer business, or should we provide digital support to our current business model? We spent a fair amount of experimentation time to figure this out.

The third rule in the playbook is to have patience. While we wanted everyone on board right way, we learned that it can take some time before digital risk and opportunity become real and relevant for people. This is where skepticism can creep in. People will think, ‘We all agreed to this strategy, but where is the return on that investment?’

Bayer just completed one of the largest cloud transformations in Europe. What advice do you have for CIOs moving from an on-prem to a cloud infrastructure?

The first is to do your homework before you start the program. If you are at a company with dozens of years of technical debt, you must transform those processes and middleware before you move to the cloud. If you don’t change your processes ahead of time, your journey to the cloud will be constantly interrupted because you will be cleaning up the mess as you go.

Second, have a clear roadmap for the older systems that will not move to the cloud. Some can be containerized and isolated, but others cannot. If you don’t have a clear plan — and this happened to us — you start to move to the cloud and then realize there were additional interfaces that you needed to clean.

Third, have a very strong relationship with your hyperscaler partners, because you will need them to solve problems along the way.

Fourth, have a very good data lifecycle management strategy. Older companies tend to have a lot of data, so they need a long-term strategy for different data types. How much time, for example, do you need to keep data for regulatory compliance and algorithm training?

And then of course, we would not have been successful in any of this without a dedicated, hard-working, and professional team.

What attributes do you look for in your senior team?

Transparency, honesty, integrity, and credibility. When they say something, will people believe them? Are they putting the agenda of the company ahead of their personal agenda? I also look for the ability to create followership, because a leader without followers is just a person going for a walk.

My senior leaders also need a strategic mindset. Are they looking at the next quarter or a three-year horizon? As you move up in in the organization, your horizon needs to expand. Finally, I hire people who are very different from me; I hire against my weakness.

What advice do you have for CIOs driving transformation?

Transformation is not about technology; it is about change. Paint the picture. Why would anyone make this difficult journey? What’s on the other end? If you don’t paint the picture, people will see only the pain in front of them, because no transformation is painless.

Also, keep in mind the ethical use of all these technologies. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

Finally, remember that your biggest stakeholder is your employee base. Make sure all of those employees are excited to go on the journey with you. Convincing the board and the external world can be easier than convincing the employee base. We engineers don’t always focus on the people part of change, so we need to consciously adjust our focus.

Digital Transformation, IT Leadership

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This article was co-authored by Katherine Kennedy, an Associate at Metis Strategy.

For years, ESG has been little more than a sub-bullet or appendix slide in most CIOs’ strategy decks. But changing consumer sensibilities and heightened investor scrutiny have swept ESG, and technology’s role in it, to the top of the agenda. Corporate strategies hinge on it.

ESG is new territory for many technology leaders and getting up to speed quickly is essential. In a recent survey conducted by Lenovo, 45% of respondents said the CIO should play a critical role in executing the enterprise’s ESG mission. While the scope of ESG is of course much broader than environmental sustainability, the need for speed here is particularly heightened as the SEC moves to enact rules that will require publicly traded companies to disclose their emissions data as early as 2024. For many CIOs today, the first question often is: Where do I start?

Nick Colisto, SVP & CIO, Avery Dennison

Avery Dennison

Nick Colisto, SVP & CIO of Avery Dennison Corporation, has some ideas. ESG has been a priority for him since he joined the company, which designs and manufactures a variety of labeling and functional materials, like tapes and bonding solutions. Over the past several years alone, his team launched a web application that powers AD Circular, a program for recycling used paper and filmic label liners. The team also developed an enterprise-wide system for tracking ESG metrics, like Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions. Insights from that system are highlighted regularly in the company’s sustainability reports.

Below, Nick suggests a few areas CIOs can start on the journey to creating a proactive ESG agenda that anticipates compliance requirements:

Dedicate a sustainability leader to the CIO organization

A dedicated sustainability expert focused on how data can drive the enterprise agenda while satisfying relevant ESG policies and guidelines is essential, Nick says. “Data is essential to a modern ESG strategy, and you won’t make strides of any respectable length if you’re constantly fighting for the time of the company’s shared ESG resource.”

If your search comes down to hiring someone with ESG policy knowledge versus technical expertise, prioritize the former, Nick says. That way, the person can narrow the scope of ESG use cases to those that will drive the most meaningful results before involving the technical talent responsible for delivery.

Of course, finding the right person is only half the battle. CIOs must set sustainability leads up for success. That means giving them visibility and access. Nick’s leader sits on Avery Dennison’s sustainability council, where he has visibility into the enterprise ESG agenda. He also has a mandate to engage business leaders to collect requirements for any initiative the council pursues, which he then translates into technical specifications and tracks from start to finish.

Focus on data governance

Data governance is vital to ESG initiatives. At minimum, it will form the backbone of your ESG reports, which will command much of your focus at the start of your ESG journey. In addition to ensuring compliance, data will also inform which goals your organization pursues and how it tracks them. Thus, the quality of your data must be exemplary.

Securing that high-quality data, Nick says, starts with establishing a single source of truth. This has been on many a CIO’s docket for a while, but the work often is not prioritized because the value of the data was relatively low, used mostly for historical reporting to support brand positioning and annual sustainability reports. “As investors demand increasingly detailed data to assess climate-related risk, data quality is critical,” Nick says.  “Disparate data will not work for ESG as it’s too difficult to analyze and report on. Also, consolidated ESG data has increased operational and strategic value.”

Once a single source of truth has been established, it must be maintained with robust data governance and management policies. These policies will become especially critical once the scope of regulatory reporting expands to include Scope 3 emissions, those a company generates indirectly, through its supply chain, products, and partners, which are particularly hard to track, says Nick.

Drive accessibility and transparency

Once a lead has been established and a clear governance process put in place, the next step is to make your data accessible and transparent. That means making sure anyone who needs the data can get their hands on it and, once they do, easily understand it. That task is harder than it sounds, but it’s worth your while. ESG programs are unlikely to gain momentum if every routine compliance report requires employees to endure a scavenger hunt for the necessary data. More importantly, people are less likely to invest themselves in a cause that is opaque or poorly understood. Knowing your ESG goals, who they involve, what data they rely on, and what activities will move the needle will make your employees feel they are part of the process. Our team sees four key ways to do this:

Publish a dashboard of the ESG metrics your organization values most: It might include metrics such as carbon offset, DEI ratings, or aggregate scores published by a third-party ESG rating provider. To drive adoption, involve leaders from various departments early in the dashboard design process.Contextualize ESG data and share it with the enterprise: ESG metrics are frequently affected by operational decisions. Yet, the people making those decisions often lack the skills to analyze and interpret ESG data effectively. Provide employees access to low/no-code analytics tools such as PowerBI and Tableau to help them understand their impact on each metric.Incentivize teams to make ESG-smart decisions: Moving the needle on ESG goals requires leaders and their teams to change the way they work. To do that, they need a reason. Give leaders incentives to get smart on the company’s ESG vision, the core metrics, and the role each team plays in realizing the future. For instance, Bank of America’s My Environment® employee program offers, among many incentives, to reimburse a portion of the cost of an employee’s electric vehicle or charger.

The principles above, when applied in earnest, can do much more for companies than simply earn them a sticker for compliance. Nick’s focus on ESG at Avery Dennison demonstrates the central role CIOs can play in asserting IT’s role not only as a service provider, but also an active contributor to an organization’s ESG mission and, ultimately, its growth.

CIO, Green IT, IT Strategy

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The negative impact of legacy networks can be substantial: increased operational costs, restricted potential for digital transformation and difficulty responding to the demands of the business. NTT’s research finds that two in three organizations confirm their technical debt has accumulated, with 71% saying that low network maturity levels are negatively impacting their operational delivery and ability to meet business goals.

Legacy networks are under unprecedented pressure. Upgrades and patches often run behind schedule. Points of vulnerability are multiplying. The shift to hybrid working requires more openings in firewalls, which in turn places a premium on frequent upgrades to firewall protections. Managers face a crisis of visibility, which is destined to get worse as more devices connect to enterprise networks. Research findings show that 93% of organization see the convergence of security and networking as a key focus of how future network characteristics will be changing.

Amit Dhingra, Executive Vice President of Enterprise Networks at NTT, identifies a raft of available protections, including the combination of identity-based security policies and zero trust network access (ZTNA).

Dhingra points out that ZTNA means remote users no longer have to tolerate reduced performance while VPNs “throttle everything down in order to inspect all the packets to ensure the right security protocols are in place. You can actually achieve the same benefit with ZTNA features that are readily available.”

In addition, Dhingra points to NTT’s anomaly detection services across multiple domains, and automated vulnerability assessments, both driven by AIOps. “In the past, this has been a very manual process,” he says. “Now, it happens instantaneously.”

The good news is that decision-makers are universally aware of the security risks that proliferate in the absence of these solutions. NTT’s research found that 90% of organizations say they need AIOps, automation & improved analytics to further optimize their network operations.  Overall, respondents identified inconsistent security policies and increased security risk as the leading consequences of underinvestment in the network.

The threats involved are familiar: 93% of organizations have no doubt that new vulnerabilities will drive increased security demands and 91% plan to move to an identity-based security architecture. Moreover, when NTT’s researchers asked what is driving network modernization, the number one answer was the ability to implement a cybersecurity mesh – the distributed architecture that enables a zero trust approach to network security.

One of the intriguing aspects of the research is the way it examines the network strategies of organizations that generate above-average financial returns. (NTT’s survey defines top-performing companies as those whose year-on-year operating margins were more than 15% and revenue growth was 10% or more in the last financial year).

Top performers are more likely to invest in cybersecurity (87% do so, compared with 41% of organizations not in the top-performing ranks). Notably, they are also more likely to involve their cybersecurity teams in network-vendor selection decisions. More broadly, top-performing organizations score highly in terms of the sophistication of their network strategy. For example, 79% told researchers their security strategy is fully aligned with business strategy. Only 48% of organizations performing at a lower level of commercial success said that this was the case.

Organizations that decide to upgrade their security posture face a wide array of choices and a need for new skills. Respondents to NTT’s survey identify a series of challenges arising from managing multiple vendors, ranging from SLA complexity to lack of interoperability and the difficulty of finding employees with the skills required to manage vendors.

As a result, nine out of 10 respondents agreed strongly that their organizations prefer paying for outcomes and buying from a catalog, with the ability to scale resources as necessary. This suggests a shift away from traditional in-house network management toward network-as-a-service offerings provided by specialist managed service providers (MSPs).

“Actually, this was a part of the report that surprised us,” says Dhingra. “We didn’t expect to hear that so many enterprises are looking to partner with managed service providers. But we do know that access to technologies and skills has become very challenging everywhere, in every part of the world. The answer for many enterprises will be to partner with MSPs who can provide those skills, and that access.”

Download the 2022–23 Global Network Report from NTT now. 

Networking

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For the past 60 years, privately-owned Merchants Fleet has provided fleet management and leasing solutions to a broad range of businesses, governments, and educational institutions. And according to Jeanine Charlton, the company’s SVP and chief technology and digital officer, 2021 was their best year ever, helped in large part to its approach to digital transformation and an emphasis on organizational culture. But with each milestone comes even greater resolve to strengthen, especially on harnessing the complexities of remote working, talent acquisition and fostering a workforce restless to learn.

“Learning is really embedded in the company,” Charlton says. “In fact, we’ve implemented what we call a Learn IQ program. As a company, we’ve gotten away from a tuition assistance model to what we call micro credentials. So all employees have an opportunity to earn them as part of this continual learning, and how we invest in our employees to allow them to keep their skills current. It’s been very effective. And for those of us in technology, I view myself as a lifelong learner, and the pace at which technology is changing, it’s important as the leader of tech for the company to set the example. Last year, I took three micro credentials and it has proven to be extremely valuable. For me, it’s how to get not just the tech team but the entire company on board with our digital transformation strategy. I think it starts with me to be knowledgeable in this space.”

Another learning curve, albeit much steeper, has been of particular relevance in the aftermath of the pandemic. Those working in tech have always worked with offshore partners that are, for the most part, remote. But now it’s expected that some onshore strategic partners or employees who are a part of an internal team are working in some hybrid model, which makes the level of complexity increase.

“At the kickoff of a project, you want to celebrate it, but how do you look for opportunities to bring the team together to build face-to-face relationships?” she says. “We provision a budget to enable that to happen. We’re heavily investing in our digital transformation strategy and we’ve invested more in technology this year than ever. As a result, we’re bringing in new team members who work in the industry and those who don’t. So this makes for an interesting challenge in how to get teams productive as fast as possible. Everything today is instant and we have this expectation that you’re productive from day one. That’s proven to not be the case, so we’ve developed a Fleet IQ program where employees have access to in-person videos with our business partners, and we pair employees with colleagues so they can ask questions in a safe environment, and learn how to navigate within their team and the company in a way that’s going to be beneficial to them as well.”

Charlton recently spoke to Maryfran Johnson, CEO of Maryfran Johnson Media and host of the IDG Tech(talk) podcast, about investing in people and collaboration in order to remain competitive and drive innovation.

Here are some edited excerpts of that conversation. Watch the full video below for more insights.

On driving growth: When it comes to our growth strategy, we’re not afraid to think and act differently when faced with challenges and finding creative solutions. At the onset of the pandemic, we had financial sponsors telling us it was going to be impossible to raise capital. But despite that advice, we made the bold decision to launch a campaign that we were open for business because we felt we had a responsibility to help our clients keep their essential businesses moving. So we worked creatively to find money and market, and we were successful in raising $370 million of capital during that time. As a result, our business has continued to thrive. We’ve also made a commitment to lead in the electrification of commercial vehicles in the industry and we’ve invested $2.5 billion in existing reservations for more than 40,000 electric vehicles.

On digital transformation: We had our best year ever in 2021 amid all of the challenges with the pandemic—supply chain challenges, ship shortages—and we were able to deliver eight million packages per day throughout North America by vehicles managed by our fleet. And this really has put digital transformation at the core of our strategy. I think our team’s winning blend of innovation, service, and support has put us at the forefront of fleet tech, making it an attractive place for top tech talent to want to work—that coupled with the fact we’re working on several innovative offerings like Total Connect solution, which takes the embedded technology in a vehicle and harnesses the value of those data assets to drive results for our clients. Adopt EV is another one in our decision to lead in electrification. So these new technologies make it a very attractive place to work, coupled with our above market benefits.

On the future of work: We have a broad mix, not just in the technology function, but across the company. In terms of our model where we have moved to fully remote, you could be in a hybrid model, or you could be in the office on a daily basis. We have an approach in place that is going to influence what model is best suited for your role. But this hasn’t been easy as we have tried to figure out what the new normal needs to look like based on your role and how you would make all that come together to be successful to the organization. So we’ve worked hard to drive employee engagement across these various models and designed companywide events around those who are onsite and those who are remote to really emulate a very similar experience. And we also look for opportunities to have purposeful in-person events—for those who are remote—to really foster relationship development into deeper collaboration.

On employee engagement: We haven’t cracked the code that says, “Okay, here is the playbook on what employee engagement needs to look like.” So I often tell my teams you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable on this topic. You have to lean in and look for new ways to engage and help nurture that engagement. And it could look different depending on the type of initiative you’re working on. But CIOs need to focus on developing and fostering a great organizational culture based on collaboration, transparency, and innovation, and have a clear purpose that goes beyond profit. Because while profit is extremely important, employees want to feel that the work they do matters. The more they can feel that, the deeper their engagement will be, as well as their job satisfaction. Also, you want to make sure that your function—those of us who work in technology—is seen as a trusted business partner. That is a critical component to as well. Engagement is tied directly to job satisfaction and retention, so it’s important to look for those opportunities. It is a never-ending conversation.

Innovation

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Businesses must prioritise fostering an inclusive company culture in order to improve the professional experiences of young tech workers from underrepresented groups, according to Wiley Edge’s second annual ‘Diversity in Tech’ report.

The report is based on a survey that asked UK respondents about their perceptions of the technology industry, to establish what is currently being done to actively improve diversity in tech teams, and where more work is still required.

The report comprises responses from 2,000 18-to-24 year-olds—44% of whom were already working in tech roles—and 200 senior business leaders in key industries, including financial services, insurance and pharmaceuticals.  to establish what is currently being done to actively improve diversity in their tech teams, and where more work is still required.

When asked to describe their experience of the industry so far, 50% of respondents rated it as either ‘entirely positive’ or ‘mostly positive’, with 30% having mixed experiences and 11% describing their time in the tech industry so far as ‘mostly negative’.

Uninteresting and difficult work were cited by 10% and 13% of respondents, respectively, as factoring into their negative experience. For those who have had a more positive experience, 28% said they have enjoyed the work, with the same figure having found the work interesting. Twenty percent of those surveyed said that they like their company’s culture, while another 20% said they have felt welcomed by their colleagues.

However, one of the key takeaways from the survey was that the benefits of pursuing a career in technology remains low amongst 18–24-year-olds. Of those surveyed for the report, only 26% of respondents who are not currently working in tech said that they believe it offers excellent career opportunities, while 29% said that they think that it offers a wide range of career choices, and 24% believe tech careers are likely to be among the most futureproof.

What is driving the racial and gender talent gap?

The survey shows there is still a lot more work to be done to hire and retain diverse talent.

In comments published alongside the report, Tom Seymour, senior director of HR at Wiley Edge, said that while it’s great that half of young tech workers have enjoyed their time in the industry so far, it’s concerning that a significant proportion have encountered some challenges.

“Our findings seem to indicate that it’s not the nature of the work itself that is an issue for most unhappy young tech employees,” he said. “Instead, the research suggests that many businesses are still struggling to establish an inclusive, welcoming environment which is having a negative impact on the wellbeing of their tech teams.”

Nearly half of the young tech workers polled, 48%, have felt uncomfortable in a job because of their gender, ethnicity, socio-economic background or neurodevelopmental condition.

The report also found that women were 22% less likely to say they have felt welcomed by their colleagues than men, and 22% less likely to say they like their company’s culture. They were also 45% more likely to say they had not had enough personal support.

Eleven percent of those surveyed said that they believe the tech industry is too male dominated, rising to 19% of women.

With regards to ethnic minority employees, white respondents were more likely to say they liked their company’s culture than any other ethnic group, 23% compared to an average of 20%, respectively. Black African respondents were the most likely to say they do not feel welcomed by their colleagues, to say that they actively do not like their company’s culture, and were also the most likely to highlight the issue of a lack of role models.

In addition to creating a potentially hostile company culture, the less diverse an organisation, the bigger the gender and ethnicity pay gaps at that organisation will be, the research suggests.

However, the survey found that only 31% of UK business leaders believe they have a gender pay gap problem, despite the latest ONS data showing that about 78% of reporting employers are paying their male employees a higher median hourly wage.

And while employment rates have been rising across all ethnic groups across the last two decades, a 2021 report by PwC found that white British people earn more on average than people from almost all other ethnic groups.

Furthermore, the report found that while only 25% of businesses admitted to having a race and ethnicity pay gap problem, more than a quarter (26%) of businesses are still failing to collect data on the demographic composition of their workforce.

What should businesses be doing better?

The lack of diversity in the technology industry is not a new talking point and while recent statistics show that the dial is moving the right direction, reports such as that from Wiley Edge show there is still more that needs to be done.

The report found employers are not unaware of  diversity and inclusion issues, with 87% of businesses acknowledging the continued lack of diversity in their tech teams. According to the survey, 42% of those polled have noticed a lack of gender diversity, 44% a lack of ethnic diversity, 35% a lack of neurodiversity, and 35% a lack of socio-economic diversity.

Having a diverse workforce is not something that will happen without organisations taking active steps to reduce bias and address some of the long-standing issues that have become pervasive in the tech industry, according to the report. But when it comes to improving the hiring process and developing a more diverse talent pipeline, only 40% of businesses surveyed currently invest in anti-bias training for hiring managers, while 61% of respondents do not use deliberately neutral job descriptions. Even fewer businesses, 32% of those surveyed, currently anonymise CVs and only 38% said that they request diverse shortlists from recruiters.

However, there has been some progress. Only 4% said that they have no anti-bias hiring practices in place at all, compared with 9% in 2021, and of those that do, 88% have noticed an improvement to some extent.

Diversity and Inclusion, Hiring

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In today’s dynamic world of work from anywhere, organizations are experiencing new pressure points. IT and security leaders find themselves grappling with extended enterprises of employees, contractors, and suppliers remotely located across the globe using an expanded set of technologies. The broad adoption of cloud apps, platforms, and infrastructure has led to a complete re-thinking of access, governance, and security.

While remote, extended enterprises accessing cloud-based technology bring potential risks, it also offers significant upside for businesses. CIOs have recognized how strategic their organizations can be in driving business growth, productivity, and reducing complexity by pushing rapid technology adoption and creating seamless, secure, and simple authentication and authorization experiences for their broad workforces.

Collectively, these changes have emphasized the need for a more holistic identity-first approach to technology adoption, implementation, and security. Much of that starts with understanding who has access to what, when they received access, and who authorized that access. That technology domain has traditionally been known as Identity Governance and Administration (IGA), but as new ways of working collide with new security paradigms, those definitions are shifting and evolving to match modern enterprise IT environments.

This broad need for IGA capabilities is well-founded, as enterprises are recognizing the side effects of distributed and fragmented user bases and tech stacks: a sharp rise in orphaned accounts that are a major security risk and a resource drain, and a lack of control and visibility into cloud application security posture, lacking clear reporting of access and any time constraints.

The weakness of traditional IGA systems

As companies start shifting to an identity-first approach to security, IGA is becoming a more sought-after capability for organizations requiring better visibility of identity administration and access entitlements across their IT infrastructure. This is a major departure from traditional, compliance-driven models, as IGA is being seen more as an enabler rather than risk mediation.

Traditional IGA solutions are primarily solving a legacy problem and were not built to manage identities in cloud-first IT environments. They lack the ability to easily integrate to modern applications and are challenging to implement, often taking 12-18 months to deploy, requiring professional services, and considerable maintenance costs along the way. The outcome is too often that traditional IGA solutions are bolted on and left alone, resulting in non-updated software and potentially with greater security holes than before. To make matters worse, legacy systems are generally designed with a small subset of users in mind, with user experiences that make broad adoption and education a significant challenge.

In a world where cloud technologies have democratized access and adoption, IGA solutions should make it possible for more users within an organization to compliantly engage with applications either as an end user or as an authorizer, ultimately driving the business forward.

The modern approach to identity governance

As enterprises continue to adopt more cloud technologies and work in a distributed environment across a broad set of users, IGA must evolve to enable rather than disrupt modern enterprises. IT leaders need a cloud-native, enterprise-grade solution that is approaching identity governance not as a bolt-on solution, but as one that has been foundationally incorporated into a broader identity-first security posture. To keep pace with today’s speed of innovation and adoption, a modern solution must be deployed in days, and be easy to use and maintain. Lastly, a modern IGA solution must deliver a seamless and frictionless experience for the workforce and help boost the productivity and agility of its IT organization.

Okta’s cloud-first approach to identity governance

As the first born-in-the-cloud identity provider, Okta has taken its modern approach to identity and access management (IAM) and applied it to IGA with Okta Identity Governance, which is now generally available. Okta Identity Governance is part of Okta’s broader workforce identity vision, unifying IAM and IGA to improve enterprises’ security posture, helping them mitigate modern security risks, improve their IT efficiency, and meet today’s productivity and compliance challenges.

Deeply integrated into Okta’s existing IAM solutions, Okta Identity Governance provides an unparalleled comprehensive view of every user’s access patterns. Enriched user context allows reviewers to not only simplify the access certification process, but also make informed decisions about user access ensuring only the right people have access to right resources. It meets users where they are by providing easy to use self-service access request capabilities, tightly integrated with collaboration tools built on a converged IAM and Governance solution, automating the provisioning of access to an enterprise’s applications and cloud resources.

With a network of 7,000+ pre-built integrations, Okta Identity Governance can provide intelligent and easy to use identity governance capabilities with the ability to automate complex identity processes, at scale.

Analyst firms and the federal government have agreed on the broad, foundational role identity plays in securing today’s organizations. Identity is the number one pillar of zero trust architecture, and that approach is built on the principle of least privilege with identity governance serving as a critical component. As organizations continue to adopt a zero trust framework, they are starting to realize the importance of moving away from a distributed identity architecture to a unified approach. Okta’s unified platform extends access and identity administration to include the key access governance tools that modern organizations need to mitigate modern security risks and improve IT resource efficiency. 

To learn more about Okta Identity Governance, visit the Okta blog.

About the Author

Paresh Bhaya is the Senior Director, Product Marketing for Identity Management business at Okta. He has been in the security industry for 10+ years and has experience in all phases of product development and marketing. He is passionate about security and you can always find him chatting about some deep security problem. Prior to Okta he was leading the Product Marketing efforts at Salesforce and worked at successful startups before that. He has an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Texas.

Security

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

In today’s dynamic world of work from anywhere, organizations are experiencing new pressure points. IT and security leaders find themselves grappling with extended enterprises of employees, contractors, and suppliers remotely located across the globe using an expanded set of technologies. The broad adoption of cloud apps, platforms, and infrastructure has led to a complete re-thinking of access, governance, and security.

While remote, extended enterprises accessing cloud-based technology bring potential risks, it also offers significant upside for businesses. CIOs have recognized how strategic their organizations can be in driving business growth, productivity, and reducing complexity by pushing rapid technology adoption and creating seamless, secure, and simple authentication and authorization experiences for their broad workforces.

Collectively, these changes have emphasized the need for a more holistic identity-first approach to technology adoption, implementation, and security. Much of that starts with understanding who has access to what, when they received access, and who authorized that access. That technology domain has traditionally been known as Identity Governance and Administration (IGA), but as new ways of working collide with new security paradigms, those definitions are shifting and evolving to match modern enterprise IT environments.

This broad need for IGA capabilities is well-founded, as enterprises are recognizing the side effects of distributed and fragmented user bases and tech stacks: a sharp rise in orphaned accounts that are a major security risk and a resource drain, and a lack of control and visibility into cloud application security posture, lacking clear reporting of access and any time constraints.

The weakness of traditional IGA systems

As companies start shifting to an identity-first approach to security, IGA is becoming a more sought-after capability for organizations requiring better visibility of identity administration and access entitlements across their IT infrastructure. This is a major departure from traditional, compliance-driven models, as IGA is being seen more as an enabler rather than risk mediation.

Traditional IGA solutions are primarily solving a legacy problem and were not built to manage identities in cloud-first IT environments. They lack the ability to easily integrate to modern applications and are challenging to implement, often taking 12-18 months to deploy, requiring professional services, and considerable maintenance costs along the way. The outcome is too often that traditional IGA solutions are bolted on and left alone, resulting in non-updated software and potentially with greater security holes than before. To make matters worse, legacy systems are generally designed with a small subset of users in mind, with user experiences that make broad adoption and education a significant challenge.

In a world where cloud technologies have democratized access and adoption, IGA solutions should make it possible for more users within an organization to compliantly engage with applications either as an end user or as an authorizer, ultimately driving the business forward.

The modern approach to identity governance

As enterprises continue to adopt more cloud technologies and work in a distributed environment across a broad set of users, IGA must evolve to enable rather than disrupt modern enterprises. IT leaders need a cloud-native, enterprise-grade solution that is approaching identity governance not as a bolt-on solution, but as one that has been foundationally incorporated into a broader identity-first security posture. To keep pace with today’s speed of innovation and adoption, a modern solution must be deployed in days, and be easy to use and maintain. Lastly, a modern IGA solution must deliver a seamless and frictionless experience for the workforce and help boost the productivity and agility of its IT organization.

Okta’s cloud-first approach to identity governance

As the first born-in-the-cloud identity provider, Okta has taken its modern approach to identity and access management (IAM) and applied it to IGA with Okta Identity Governance, which is now generally available. Okta Identity Governance is part of Okta’s broader workforce identity vision, unifying IAM and IGA to improve enterprises’ security posture, helping them mitigate modern security risks, improve their IT efficiency, and meet today’s productivity and compliance challenges.

Deeply integrated into Okta’s existing IAM solutions, Okta Identity Governance provides an unparalleled comprehensive view of every user’s access patterns. Enriched user context allows reviewers to not only simplify the access certification process, but also make informed decisions about user access ensuring only the right people have access to right resources. It meets users where they are by providing easy to use self-service access request capabilities, tightly integrated with collaboration tools built on a converged IAM and Governance solution, automating the provisioning of access to an enterprise’s applications and cloud resources.

With a network of 7,000+ pre-built integrations, Okta Identity Governance can provide intelligent and easy to use identity governance capabilities with the ability to automate complex identity processes, at scale.

Analyst firms and the federal government have agreed on the broad, foundational role identity plays in securing today’s organizations. Identity is the number one pillar of zero trust architecture, and that approach is built on the principle of least privilege with identity governance serving as a critical component. As organizations continue to adopt a zero trust framework, they are starting to realize the importance of moving away from a distributed identity architecture to a unified approach. Okta’s unified platform extends access and identity administration to include the key access governance tools that modern organizations need to mitigate modern security risks and improve IT resource efficiency. 

To learn more about Okta Identity Governance, visit the Okta blog.

About the Author

Paresh Bhaya is the Senior Director, Product Marketing for Identity Management business at Okta. He has been in the security industry for 10+ years and has experience in all phases of product development and marketing. He is passionate about security and you can always find him chatting about some deep security problem. Prior to Okta he was leading the Product Marketing efforts at Salesforce and worked at successful startups before that. He has an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Texas.

Security