CIO Think Tank

Digital transformation (DX) has become a catchphrase and trend in the corporate world:

As organizations try to find ways to remain competitive and create an enhanced experience for internal and external stakeholders, they must bridge the gap between business and technology.

This requires a collaborative effort between technology, people, and the business.

Technology needs to be understood as a critical enabler for every part of the organization.

It is far too easy for IT to get wrapped up in the new technologies that come across their desks regularly, or businesses to get caught up with the latest trends.

The combination of rogue insiders and external attackers makes SaaS application detection a massive pain point for enterprises, particularly within core business applications. External attackers leverage stolen credentials to impersonate an insider and connect to applications, while at the same time insiders are not sufficiently monitored. Such examples could include a fraudster’s takeover via social engineering, or incorrect implementation by an employee, or a doctor accessing celebrity patient medical data, or a salesperson downloading a report of all customers before switching to work for a competitor. Even after the enterprise receives a complaint or is otherwise suspicious, detection of these breaches usually consists of manual sifting through tons of log data from multiple sources. RevealSecurity’s CRO, Mark Fullbrook, will explore the growing challenge of SaaS application detection, explain why current detection solutions are usually ineffective, and share solutions using real customer examples.

• Digital transformation is no longer a buzzword, but a necessity for enterprises looking to stay competitive and meet evolving customer demands. However, CIOs and CISOs face several key challenges and roadblocks that delay the adoption of digital transformation initiatives. To overcome these challenges, enterprises need to focus on the key pillars that support any digital innovation and transformation.
• The key pillars that support digital innovation and transformation include IT infrastructure, applications, data, security, dexterity, resilience, user experience, leadership, culture, and partnerships.
• Enterprises that can effectively address these pillars can create a unified gateway for innovation, collaboration, and cohesive customer experience across the enterprise in the form of a digital workplace platform.
• A digital workplace platform can help improve end-user experience by boosting the use of AI, automation, self-service, and mobility. This platform can also improve satisfaction and productivity, while ensuring all required aspects of data risk and compliance are met to stay protected from all conventional and modern IT security threats. By adopting a digital workplace platform, enterprises can create value-based, robust, and agile single-window customer experiences across the enterprise value chain. Enterprises can save capital expenses, improve OpEx, reduce tickets per month, reduce the need for desk-side support, and significantly reduce the cost of endpoint devices, patching, application provisioning, and more.
• The future of IT for CIOs and CISOs lies in adopting a digital workplace platform that can help enterprises harness the power of a unified platform, reduce costs, improve end-user experience, and move towards a singular experience. Enterprises that embrace this digital transformation will be well-positioned to thrive in the new digital era.

The terms "Artificial Intelligence" and "Advanced Machine Learning" are often thought of interchangeably. While there is a relationship between AI and AML, to say they are the same thing is an oversimplification and misclassification. Rather, one begets the other with AI being the basic principle upon which AML is developed. As AI begins to mature and migrate away from purely advanced mathematical operations into decision making paradigms, AML steps forward as the predictive ability of machines to process vast quantities of data. As data and analytics becomes foundational to the way every business operates, AI and AML will become foundational capabilities.

Bridging the gap between business and technology is not easy and requires discipline and balance between technology, people, and the business. For so many organizations today, technology is the business. Technology needs to be understood as a critical enabler in every part of the organization from the front line to the back office. It creates new value by crunching data to deliver new insights, it spurs innovation, and it disrupts traditional business models.

For business and technology leaders alike, new actions and behavioral changes can help their organizations make this shift. CIOs must take responsibility for problems, they should convey that when technology fails, many people typically share responsibility.

If digital transformation is a journey, then data is the fuel that transports your company from here to there. Comprehending and creating insight from data is transformational. Being able to gather and analyze data to generate a competitive edge, creates new opportunities and promotes innovation. However, to support a pipeline of up-to-date and competitive modern data and analytics, a sound foundation and architecture must be constructed.

Data is a key enabler for all of the CIO’s plans to transform and should be at the heart of any organizational strategy. All of the digitization in our world today means we have enormous amounts of data available, and data has now become the number one business asset for every organization. The utilization of data has grown exponentially giving organizations the ability to better understand customers, research key trends, and much more. Enterprises are heading towards an environment of uncertainty and ambiguity that requires continuous flexibility, innovation and investment or reinvestment in data and analytics strategies.

Disruption alters, destroys, but also creates value. You realize the need to act once revenue starts to shift, which is happening at a faster pace than most would think. Disruption can be a great thing if you act upon it, but it is a threat if you watch idly. We will discuss how CIOs and CISOs can be proactive and act on disruption by figuring out how to identify, prioritize and respond.