Transforming the economy as well as the mode in which enterprises operate, the COVID-19 is changing the way CIOs view the data. Thus, CIOs must develop strategies that enable them to manage the complexity of data and take control of it in the post-pandemic world, hoping to be in the year 2021.
COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the way economies, customers and the supply chain behave. These changes mean the legacy data that enterprises currently possess, can no longer serve their increasingly business demands.
For CIOs, who are responsible for the enterprise infrastructure, tools and platforms as well as managing and moving data, the data realities, for the most part, are still the same even though the scope has changed.
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Due to the acceleration in the digital transformation journey of most enterprises, CIOs have to handle a significant amount of data processing, movement, storage while constantly having to deal with the rising security concerns. As 2021 is just around the corner, here are a few steps that CIOs can take to approach their growing data responsibilities.
As data processing and movement happen at a rapid pace, it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify data leaks. Hence, enterprises must use AI-driven tools that will not only help them to scan for leaks, but also provide them the ability to prevent them.
By leveraging AI-driven data leak prevention tools, CIOs can eliminate unwanted data leaks by limiting, tracking, and blocking unauthorized data access and sharing. Furthermore, AI-based data defenders tools can understand the previous and future cyber-attacks and data loss events that enable them to decrease the chances of eliminating the dreaded threat scenarios.
The COVID-19 has exposed vulnerabilities in many enterprises in the process of managing their Identity and Access Management Security. The acceleration towards the remote and hybrid working model has made identity and access protocols significantly complex and difficult to keep track and maintain.
To address this issue, CIOs can enhance safeguards and governance around privileged account access and orphaned accounts for embracing single sign-on (SSO). Also, the workforce’s vulnerability in 2020 has also put the importance of testing and multi-factor authentication (MFA) processing at the forefront for 2021 and beyond.
Today digital communication is emerging as the primary method for engaging with customers. Hence, CIOs should help their enterprises optimize digital engagement. Digital engagements only have value in every step that is logged and tracked. Therefore, CIOs have the choice to choose metrics that will be beneficial to them. The metrics will also help to develop dashboards to track, assess and share the success of the engagement.
As the current infrastructure of most enterprises is not equipped to handle the ever-evolving complexities of data, CIOs should give a thought to adding data processing power and storage infrastructure to the edge in 2021.
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One way to approach this methodology is by evaluating real-time data processing and rapid decision making that will help to keep customers engaged while at the same time, keep the business competitive. As the demands for rapid processing power and data analysis will increase, CIOs will need to add edge computing capabilities to their present infrastructure.
In the coming year, the probability of data becoming more complex and dynamic is higher. Therefore, CIOs must rethink the way they have been approaching the data, and craft strategies by using the above as reference to prepare their enterprise for challenges that are in store.
Vishal Muktewar is a Senior Correspondent at On Dot Media. He reports news that focuses on the latest trends and innovations happening in the B2B industry. An IT engineer by profession, Vishal has worked at Insights Success before joining Ondot. His love for stories has driven him to take up a career in enterprise journalism. He effectively uses his knowledge of technology and flair for writing, for crafting features, articles and interactions for technology enterprise media platforms.
