There’s a lot of items on a chief information officer’s plate these days but the issues that prevent them from sleeping easy can be boiled down to three things, according to a recent survey.
Security, downtime and talent acquisition “weigh heaviest” on CIOs’ minds, according to Sungard Availability Service, an U.S.-based enterprise cloud hosting and disaster recovery firm that commissioned a poll of 276 IT professionals.
Nearly two thirds (62 per cent) of the respondents cited leaving mobile phones, laptops and other devices in vulnerable places as their chief security concern, followed by password sharing (59 per cent). Sixty per cent of the respondents said they will enforce stricter security policies this year.
More than half of the respondents (51 per cent) believe security planning should be the last item to receive budget cuts in 2015.
Downtime is the second most critical concern for CIOS. Seventy five per cent said that disaster recovery testing reduces downtime.
“The implications that information security and downtime threats place on a business have evolved and become more complex in the last several years, making it a high priority for CIOs,” said Keith Tilley, vice-president of global sales and customer services at Sungard AS.
Sungard AS found that two-in-five (42 per cent) of respondents consider testing disaster recovery plans vital and should be among the last line items to be cut from the IT budget.
The survey also found that 38 per cent if CIOs are concerned about their organization’s ability to acquire talent
As many as 50 per cent of respondents believe that talent acquisition and retention does not get the appropriate focus from business and often gets overlooked.
Sungard AS said talent acquisition ranked higher than other “overlooked” IT issues in the workplace which included data centre expansion and shadow IT.