Eyes on Data: The Elevated Role of Data Management and the CDO
As data becomes more prevalent for every single employee of every organization,
it is imperative that organizations go beyond data governance to develop a
strong data-driven culture. The importance of a data-driven culture was
identified as a key factor in overall success. Data culture starts at the top.
Senior executives must establish a data mindset across the firm, emphasizing the
importance of a sound data management discipline. Getting the most out of an
organization’s data means investing in the programs that support it and the
people who are tasked with using it to ensure strong data awareness and
literacy. Without a focus on data literacy, organizations are at risk of coming
up short in achieving their objectives. ... Today’s data management
professionals are assuming more and more responsibility for the public’s data.
It is critical, therefore, that firms take responsibility for the ethical access
and use of this data and do everything they can to avoid unintentional outcomes
due to poor data quality, lack of data analytic model governance, or hidden data
biases.
What are the biggest challenges organizations face in their digital transformation efforts?
The leadership should give a big safety net to everyone by saying ‘Hey, we are
going on this journey, we are going to learn a lot and, if you fail, if you have
issues, that’s okay. We’ll cover you, we are on your side, let’s just go through
this learning journey first.’ So give that safety net for everyone. At the same
time, provide some kind of framework for learning. You can’t just say to a whole
organization we are going to be transforming ourselves and we are going to be
DevOps-enabled and just leave it at that. You should have a program, and some
kind of learning mechanism, and probably some outside training if that is
needed. You should have days set aside, maybe even give employees 80% of the
time to do normal work but 20% to learn something new. This framework of
learning and enabling is really important for people to upskill themselves.
Think in a different way and basically be happy about the journey that they are
on because once people are motivated and happy, then a bunch of stuff starts
happening.
Operational Resilience: More than Disaster Recovery
The broader focus of operational resilience requires organisation-wide
participation. You cannot simply leave it to a single department or team.
Instead, everyone needs to be involved, from executives and the board of
directors to individual employees in multiple departments. In today’s climate,
it’s not just your own organisation that’s under threat. Your suppliers,
partners, and vendors are targets, too. If a major supplier is compromised or
taken down, your business might go down with them. Leadership needs to
understand risk and to know the risk tolerance and risk appetite of the company.
That even includes things such as procurement functions and agreements with
third-party suppliers. Resilience must be built into everything down to
every-day workflows, and if a single supplier is insufficient to manage risk,
then diversity of supply is a must. There are many cases where a cyber event at
a supplier rendered multiple organisations unable to fulfil their business
outcomes. ... In the context of operational resilience, every risk management
scenario and process must consider the supply chain.
Helping users and organizations build an instinctive data privacy habit
Although there’s no one-size-fits all measurement metric for engagement, there
are a few guidelines we typically use. The first is tracking the level of
engagement and participation from our stakeholders, including consumers,
businesses, and other non-profit organizations we partner with. We look at the
number of events and activities hosted (e.g., webinars, panel discussions, etc.)
and how well attended those are, as well as media/social media mentions as a
bellwether for gauge reach and impact of the campaign. Additionally, we also
measure success by the extent to which we’ve achieved the objectives and goals
we set at the beginning of each campaign. It’s an abstract metric, but for Data
Privacy Week, our mission is to raise awareness and educate individuals and
organizations about the importance of protecting personal information and
championing transparency by companies relative to how they collect, store, and
use consumer data.
6 things ChatGPT can't do (and another 20 it refuses to do)
It won't write about anything after 2021 - As an AI language model, I was
trained on a large dataset of text that only goes up to 2021. This means that I
don't have access to information or events that occurred after that date. While
I have access to a lot of historical data and information, I don't have access
to current events, news, or updates that have occurred since my training data
cutoff date. ... It won't predict future results of sports events or political
contests - As an AI language model, I can process and analyze large amounts
of data, including historical data on sports events and political contests.
However, making accurate predictions for these types of events is not always
straightforward. While historical data can be used to train machine learning
models to identify patterns and correlations, it cannot account for
unforeseeable events, changes in circumstances, or new variables that may impact
the outcome. Additionally, humans make decisions and can change their behavior
based on many factors, making it difficult to predict the outcome of an event
with complete certainty.
8 signs you’ve mistimed a major IT initiative
Indecision and a poor risk appetite are two common reasons why CIOs frequently
delay an important IT initiative. “Nimble, forward-looking leaders put execution
speed at the center of performance discussions; indecisive IT leaders tend to
rely on consensus decisions and endless risk evaluations,” says Colm
Sparks-Austin, president and managing director of business advisory firm
Capgemini Canada. To correctly time a major IT initiative, the decision-maker
should align the initiative with business goals. “If the business isn’t
spearheading the initiative, or is not aware of it, it’s clear that something is
wrong,” Sparks-Austin says. CIOs should also ensure they’re analyzing all IT
spend through a business goals lens, Sparks-Austin advises. ...
Unrealistic funding almost always plays an important role in initiative timing,
observes Ravi Malick, CIO at cloud-based content management, collaboration, and
file-sharing tool provider Box. Overly optimistic funding is almost always a
main part of the equation when an initiative fails, he notes.
How to make progress on managing unstructured data
“As the CIO, your job is to be able to provide the information a business needs
in order to make decisions,” Minetola said. “The ability to now see into that 80
per cent of the data and make decisions based off that . . . is significant.”
... When thinking about all the data sources an organisation needs to grapple
with as part of its transformation, it makes sense. For instance, consider a
bank with thousands of computer systems in over a hundred countries. “You need
technologies that close silos,” Evelson said. “Whenever we talk about digital
transformation, data and analytics platforms that unify everything that I just
talked about, like search-powered technologies, are at the top of everyone’s
mind.” ... Search-powered technology should bring two critical capabilities to
the table: a visualisation layer and machine learning. Visualisation improves
the ability to extract insights from large volumes of data. “It’s one thing to
be able to have data,” Minetola said. “It’s another thing to understand it.”
Furthermore, machine learning such as natural language processing or vector
search can help join data sources to create more relevance and context.
What Ukraine's IT Industry Can Teach CIOs About Resilience
The agile, remote structure refined during the pandemic has served Ukrainian IT
companies well as they operate using a hybrid workforce -- some employees live
abroad, some are on the move due to Russian attacks, and others serve in the
military. Unlike traditional industries, many IT jobs are service-oriented.
“All you need is a computer, Internet, and electricity. You can literally work
from anywhere,” Kavetskyi says. Both companies and individuals have engaged in a
sustained process of business continuity planning. Now, most organizations have
it down to a science. “They have power generators in their offices and
Starlinks,” Kavetskyi claims. He emphasizes the power of knowledge sharing: “The
IT clusters helped small and medium-sized companies implement basic continuity
plans. Everyone working in this industry had a chance to see what others were
doing.” “Of course, there was data that couldn't be shared,” he adds. “But in
general, big companies were willing to [share their strategies]. Mainly, we had
to find time to organize those meetings, considering the logistical
challenges.”
Soft skills: How well-rounded IT pros can push your business forward
With organizational spend under greater scrutiny, it’s critical for every new
hire you onboard to add value to the business. Productivity and technical skills
are paramount in demonstrating resource value. But when you have two candidates
with comparable technical skills, you need to consider the value each person’s
soft skills bring to the table. ... Soft skills impact how teams communicate,
collaborate, and problem-solve, and these capabilities determine the success of
your IT projects and client relationships – and, ultimately, your organizational
culture. Company culture also plays a crucial role in your brand reputation: You
want clients and job candidates to view your team as pragmatic, business-minded
problem solvers and communicators. So as non-technical skills continue to play a
critical role in the IT arena, it’s time to reconsider the qualities you search
for and foster in employees. Skills tests like coding problems and design
scenarios make it relatively easy to gauge an applicant’s technical
skills.
Evolving cyberattacks, alert fatigue creating DFIR burnout, regulatory risk
Magnet Forensics’ respondents generally agreed that addressing the burnout and
alert fatigue facing DFIR professionals is hampered by recruiting and hiring
challenges as well as onboarding difficulties and a lack of automation.
Increased investment in automation would be “highly” or “extremely” valuable for
a range of DFIR functions including the remote acquisition of target endpoints
and the processing of digital evidence, half of respondents said. However, while
automation such as security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) is
already in place in many SOCs, those solutions orchestrate and automate
cybersecurity runbooks by taking telemetry, enforcing actions and using other
tools, the report noted. “While important for threat containment and
remediation, these runbook-related activities are distinct from those performed
by digital forensics automation solutions, which execute a data transformation
pipeline by orchestrating, automating, performing, and monitoring forensic
workflows,” it added.
Quote for the day:
"Take time to deliberate; but when the
time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in." --
Andrew Jackson
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