Cliff Condon, chief research and product officer at Forrester, writes that next year will be “a year of action” when it comes to cybercriminals. Condon notes that many firms will experiment with more advanced technologies like AI and virtual reality; “But there will be at least one fatal misstep from a business technology novice trying to keep pace—in 2017, we predict that a Fortune 1,000 firm will go out of business due to poor resiliency planning following a security breach.”
A clear-eyed, well-rehearsed and communicated disaster recovery plan can be a huge boon to your company. Whether it’s from a cyberattack or natural disaster, David Dodd, the CIO of Stevens Institute of Technology, agrees that IT leaders need to focus on how to ensure their organizations can be resilient in the face of adversity. “Institutions can no longer assume that any sort of disaster will leave them intact to function. And yet financially, the majority of institutions have to continue to function,” Dodd says.
“There’s a new element that involves the need to operate virtually; of realizing that it doesn’t matter what happens to your institution, you have to continue operations,” he adds. “This is a lesson that came out of Katrina and was huge for us with Superstorm Sandy. Wherever you are, you need to be able to continue to function or the financial impact can be enormous.”
Bobby Riggs, CFO at Collaborative Solutions, notes that when it comes to resiliency planning, location is becoming an increasingly vital variable.
“Globalization is adding complexity to the role of the CFO,” he says. “As companies rely increasingly on the global economy, CFOs will need to consider the balance between national and multinational operations and keep risk mitigation a priority in a foreign environment. This is why it’s so important to remain tech-savvy and leverage predictive analytics as much as possible—to determine the patterns and trends of different threats and opportunities.”
In part two of this blog series, we delve into what HCM, technology, and higher education leaders are saying about how the changing workforce will shape the year ahead.