CIO Corner: Partnering with Business Units

CIO’s Top Coverage of Anthem

The Anthem breach stole headlines for the past two weeks. As you can imagine, CIOs took to Twitter to discuss the largest healthcare breach in history (read our take here). Brown University CIO Ravi Pendse highlighted a great in-depth analysis of the breach from Brian Krebs. Krebs is one of our go-to sources for unbiased, fact-based reporting on cyber security.

The Wall Street Journal has produced consistently stellar coverage of the story’s developments, and Jay Ferro, CIO for the American Cancer Society shared an article advocating for defense in depth.

Security Professionals Weigh in on Shadow IT

Shadow IT has risen in prominence in CIO conversations, and the evidence is on social media. Mississippi Medical Center CIO David Chou shared an article based on the latest Cloud Security Alliance survey. Among other stats, the survey found that 72% of IT professionals don’t know the number of cloud apps in use but want to. Without visibility into cloud use, CIOs may not be aware that employees are using high-risk services or signing up for redundant application licenses. Don’t expect this topic to go away anytime soon. Our latest report found that on average, an employee uses 27 different cloud services.

Learning to Listen to Users

We’ve mentioned there’s never been a better time to be a CIO, with data analytics tools available that allow CIOs to contribute to their organizations’ business goals. Of course, success in the new model for IT requires a proactive approach and willingness to become a true ally to lines of business.

We caught a great exchange on this topic between two influential CIOs, Theresa Rowe of Oakland University and David Bray of the FCC. Rowe argues that CIOs must listen to rather than tell users what tools they need to succeed. We couldn’t agree more: employees know best what tools will help them do their jobs most efficiently. After all, an entire organization’s worth of employees has more time to research new work tools than one CIO. Bray agrees, arguing that understanding business goals should define IT solutions rather than the other way around.

Thanks for tuning in to another edition of CIO Corner. To stay up to date with CIO chatter during the week, follow our list of In the Know CIOs on Twitter.