IT STRATEGY

OK team, bring IT in

The relationship between CISOs and C-level executives isn’t always smooth sailing. Data shows that 30% of CISOs feel they don’t receive enough support from their CEO, which Mike Mestrovich, the former principal deputy chief information officer of the CIA, told us comes down to a few key things, like a changing structure in operations and risk.

“I would argue that the risk dynamic has changed substantially over where it was 10 years ago,” he said. “Therefore, if the risk calculus changes, should we reexamine the reporting structure, or at least how the CEO gets information to ensure that it’s timely and unfiltered?”

To better ensure CEOs and CISOs are on the same page, Mestrovich—who now serves as the CISO at Rubrik, a data management company in Palo Alto, California—said CISOs must prioritize clear communication.

Read more here.—AF

Do you work in IT or have information about your IT department you want to share? Email [email protected].

PRESENTED BY SPLUNK

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Security threats. System outages. Funky code. They’re all inconveniences (understatement alert).

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AI

Quite the operation you have here

“Operational efficiency” is one of the biggest buzzwords in recent corporate quarterly earnings reports, according to Morgan Stanley analysts.

In a recent note, Morgan Stanley equity strategist Michael Wilson and team wrote that mentions of the phrase “operational efficiency” have skyrocketed in transcripts of recent earnings reports, with executives often focused on the kind of efficiencies they imagine will arrive from cutting costs and pivoting to AI.

The strategists wrote that “expense discipline” and “technologies that can drive future productivity like AI” were a major theme for executives across a range of industries. The report emphasized overlap between discussions of cost control and AI in several sectors, including the software industry, finance, healthcare, and professional services.

Read more here.—TM

Do you work in IT or have information about your IT department you want to share? Email [email protected]. Want to go encrypted? Ask Tom for his Signal.

CLOUD

Cloud do you do it

Data disasters happen. Cloud services can go down. Fires can hit data centers. Dogs do, on rare occasions, eat homework.

Having a backup copy somewhere helps to avoid surprise data disappearances, of course, but IT pros, especially cloud newbies, may still want to keep their precious info and assets close.

An attendee of an October IT Brew event, “Up in the Air: The State of Cloud Computing,” had the following question for guest David Vidoni, VP of IT at the workflow-automation company Pegasystems:

If you move something to the cloud, should you have your own on-premise backup location?

We posed the question to Vidoni and later, to other industry pros.

These responses have been edited for length and clarity

Vidoni: I think the more important question is: Do you have a backup somewhere—in the cloud somewhere else, or maybe it’s in a different region or a different availability zone? So, if there is ever a problem, you’re able to go to that backup location and get it.

Erik Duffield, CEO and co-founder, Hakkoda: You absolutely need backup-recovery strategies. They do not have to be on-prem…Most cloud solutions and cloud platforms—particularly on the data side, but also on the application side—have multiple layers of point-and-time recovery available to you.

Keep reading here.—BH

Do you work in IT or have information about your IT department you want to share? Email [email protected].

TOGETHER WITH VEEAM

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