As companies migrate to the cloud, many providers are serving up industry clouds—cloud services that offer data models and workflows that meet the basic needs of companies in particular industries like banking, healthcare, and manufacturing. By taking care of table stakes requirements, these specialized clouds are saving companies time and money. And perhaps more importantly,…
Budget planning during uncertain economic times is never CIOs’ favorite activity. But the next eighteen months aren’t shaping up to be as challenging as some may fear. For the most part, budgets are holding steady or growing in the single digits, with continued investments in security, analytics, and the cloud, among other areas. Gartner predicts…
Banking as a Service (BaaS) is revolutionising the finance sector. BaaS enables non-financial companies to provide customers with financial products and services such as personal loans, credit cards and digital savings accounts. It leverages the expertise and experience of trusted banks, such as Standard Chartered, so they can offer a wider range of services to…
One of the most important components of data privacy and security is being compliant with the regulations that call for the protection of information. Regulators want to see transparency and controllability within organizations, because that is what makes them trustworthy from a data privacy and security standpoint. Ideally, organizations will deploy systems that provide compelling evidence…
Risk management and mitigation is a high priority for CEOs and other senior executives worldwide — including CIOs and cybersecurity executives. The fact is, it’s impossible to separate risk from technology implementations and the potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities they present. One of the biggest challenges of risk management, as it relates to IT, is the emergence of a…
Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity hit a record high in 2021 of more than $5 trillion in global volume. While the market has certainly slowed this year, it remains on par with pre-pandemic levels — quite a feat at a time of business uncertainty and inflation. But when it comes to corporate deal-making, risk lurks around every corner. The…
Cybersecurity threats and their resulting breaches are top of mind for CIOs today. Managing such risks, however, is just one aspect of the entire IT risk management landscape that CIOs must address. Equally important is reliability risk – the risks inherent in IT’s essential fragility. Issues might occur at anytime, anywhere across the complex hybrid…
Cybersecurity breaches can result in millions of dollars in losses for global enterprises and they can even represent an existential threat for smaller companies. For boards of directors not to get seriously involved in protecting the information assets of their organizations is not just risky — it’s negligent. Boards need to be on top of…
Last month in this column, I wrote about how businesses need to “lock up the front door” to their systems to prevent phishing attacks and take a multi-tiered approach to rethinking the identity of their employees, partners, and customers. And while we have been banging this drum for quite some time, a new villain has…
Customer centricity, or putting the customer’s expectations front and center, is not a new concept. But given the reality of the global pandemic, coupled with uncertain times, delivering on this concept is more important than ever, especially for SMBs. Simply put, delivering genuine value across every customer touchpoint can not only help build resilience but…