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8 Top CIO Efficiencies for 2022

Let’s face it: The challenges that CIOs face today are massive. For one, the global pandemic has resulted in businesses worldwide abruptly transitioning to remote work. This has played a significant role in Industry 4.0’s continued revolution of the production floor with even greater urgency. And as consumerism gradually recovers from the profound makeover, CIOs have a lot on their plate to deal with.

To make matters worse, cybersecurity threats loom larger than ever before, as the power of the dark web fuels government-backed allies and eCriminal groups. While this did not gain much attention in the previous years, recent events have resulted in them suddenly grabbing a seat at the head of the table. This post will review all the challenges they’re facing.

Challenges Facing CIOs in 2022

1. Remote work security is still on the radar

As organizations continue to embrace remote work, one of the many issues that CIOs will have to address is IT security for remote workers. The remote workforce comes with myriad challenges, with employees depending on their home network—and sometimes their personal devices—to accomplish their tasks. The widespread usage of home networks has made organizations more vulnerable to cyberattacks.

Here are some statistics to help paint a clear picture of how dire the situation is.

From a sample size of 41,000 US-based firms, the study discovered that remote home networks were:

7.5 times more likely to have at least five different families of malware.
3.5 times more likely than business networks to have at least one malware family.
More than 25% of all devices have one or more services exposed on the internet.
Common malware families are highly prevalent. This includes Trickbot, which is observed 3.75 times more frequently, and Mirai, which is observed 20 times more frequently.

2. Disruption of the supply chain by cybersecurity

In the aftershock of the pandemic, businesses across the board are experiencing a large-scale disruption to their supply chain—they are experiencing difficulty in getting technology and delivering products. This disruption has brought forth a massive opportunity for criminals to restructure their businesses. Today, conventional criminals are flocking online to take advantage of the newly shifted digital-first world. This trend has fueled the growth of cybercriminal cartels.

With eCrime becoming more powerful, counter incident reports have seen an 82% increase in attacks. Island hopping, which is an eCrime that involves an attacker infiltrating an organization’s network to initiate attacks on other players along that organization’s supply chain, has also occurred 55% of the time.

3. Big data

Big data is a combination of semi-structured, structured, and unstructured data gathered by organizations that can be mined for information and used in predictive modeling, machine learning, and other advanced analytics applications.

Today, organizations have to make sense of and put complex data sets to use. In fact, a recent GE and Accenture study found that 88% of organizations put big data at the top of their priorities.

Big data and analytics can be used to minimize supply chain disruptions, provide insight-driven procurement and sales, and improve forecasting. That said, you can only achieve this feat if your data sets are clean. That’s where Power BI Reporting can come in—it enables you to clean and reanalyze your data using powerful technology. CIOs can also use Power BI Reporting in 2022 to clean big data sets with incorrect suburbs and even add new suburbs after obtaining additional information.

The Power BI Scheduler allows businesses to schedule custom business intelligence reports for various team members in whatever format they require. It has automated delivery. So you can set and forget.

4. The customer experience: Revamping your digital approach

Providing the utmost customer experience is vital to gaining a competitive edge in today’s cutthroat market. In 2022 and likely beyond, CIOs must work hand in hand with the CMO to co-design a seamless customer experience.

Many organizations are finding it difficult to achieve the digital experience that today’s consumers demand. CIOs need to address outdated and inadequate approaches to how customers engage with their brands. From supporting customers through third-party tools such as Alexa and Google to real-time engagement, today’s customers expect a smooth, multichannel experience.

5. Getting more done with fewer employees

Unstructured data has evolved to be the best friend and probably the last defense line for the traditional worker. When an organization has highly unstructured data, there is a greater need for its employees to solve the problem with information that is hard to comprehend, aggregate, analyze, and make decisions based on this data. Favorable outcomes depend on how quickly and accurately those steps occur.

The recent global events have led to organizations finding it harder to get the right talent. As such, most organizations have been forced to work with fewer employees. For such organizations to be efficient in this age of big data, CIOs need to implement automated data delivery analytics to help existing staff be more efficient. Additionally, CIOs should start filling their talent pipeline if they haven’t started doing so.

6. Maintaining data privacy and governance

Whereas data can be an excellent source of useful insights, the potential risks that come with its poor handling can make it a liability that opens an organization up to fines, penalties, or worse. Strict data privacy regulations are gradually becoming the norm, making data security and governance one of the most pressing challenges that CIOs must address.

IT leaders should maintain constant communication with all departments in their organization to ensure oversight of sensitive customer data. In 2022, CIOs must learn how to create a balance between the need for easy access to self-service applications with proper data protection and governance.

7. Increasing investment in edge computing

The growth of data outside the data center is a new norm in most organizations. Today, large quantities of data are generated from mobile devices, remote branches, and IoT smart devices. Gartner estimates that 75% of enterprise data will be generated and used outside the data center. The necessity to utilize storage capabilities and computing power at the edge of the network will present a significant challenge to CIOs in 2022 and beyond.

Bottom Line

CIOs hold a great opportunity to support a more agile, efficient supply chain and a more seamless connected customer experience using various digital tools. And yet, they must do all this while still battling the evils of the dark web. While it is a mighty challenge, with the right strategy and tools, you can conquer these challenges in 2022.