Which threats are chief information officers most concerned about?
- Details
- Published: Friday, 03 April 2015 14:08
What worries chief information officers (CIOs) and IT professionals the most? According to a recent survey commissioned by Sungard Availability Services information security, downtime and talent acquisition weigh heaviest on their minds.
Information security
Due to the increasing frequency and complexity of cyber-attacks, security ranks highest among IT concerns in the workplace for CIOs; as a result more than half of survey respondents (51 percent) believe security planning should be the last item to receive budget cuts in 2015.
While external security threats are top of mind for IT professionals, internal threats are often the root cause of security disasters. Nearly two-thirds of the survey respondents cited leaving mobile phones or laptops in vulnerable places as their chief security concern (62 percent), followed by password sharing (59 percent). These internal security challenges created by employees, lead 60 percent of respondents to note that in 2015 they would enforce stricter security policies for employees.
Downtime
Second to security, downtime is also a leading concern for CIOs. Linked to this, 42 percent of respondents consider the testing of their disaster recovery plans vital to their organizations and also among the last line items that should be cut from 2015 IT budgets. Not only is downtime expensive, but the damage to an enterprise's reputation far outweighs the monetary costs.
Talent acquisition
Talent acquisition gets overlooked as a threat, however the need for top IT talent continues to be a growing challenge for the technology sector in 2015: 38 percent of respondents noted that CIOs are concerned about talent acquisition.
While this stands as a top-of-mind concern for CIOs, 50 percent of respondents believe talent acquisition and retention does not get the appropriate focus from the business and often gets overlooked. Talent acquisition ranked higher than any other overlooked IT issue in the workplace including data centre / center expansion, shadow IT and others.
Methodology
The survey, conducted by SurveyMonkey Audience, reached 276 IT professionals and was completed in December 2014.
