WHY BUSINESSES NEED TO ADOPT A
CROSS-ORGANISATIONAL
TO DIGITAL RISK
APPROACH MANAGEMENT
Digital Transformation is sweeping across the globe as
business leaders recognise the many benefits it offers.
But it’s important that security is not disregarded in the
process. Chris Miller, Regional Director UK and Ireland, RSA
Security, looks at the dark side of Digital Transformation
and the cocktail of unseen risks created as IT infrastructure
becomes more complex and interconnected.
Chris Miller, Regional Director UK and
Ireland, RSA Security
E
veryone’s talking
about Digital
Transformation.
It’s a market
predicted to hit
US$800 billion
by 2025, as
organisations around the world look to
emerging technologies to drive revenue,
enhance process efficiencies and get
closer to their customers.
Modern CIOs are increasingly viewing
Digital Transformation not as a ‘nice-
to-have’, but an essential business
driver. Nearly half (45%) of senior
decision makers worldwide claimed
they were concerned about becoming
obsolete within three-to-five years, while
three-quarters (73%) said they need
to be more ‘digital’ to succeed going
forward, according to Dell’s 2018 Digital
Transformation Index.
86
But the truth is that every new project
can potentially expose an organisation to
new digital risk. This can’t be addressed
by siloed teams. Instead, IT needs to
understand threats in a business context
in order to accurately quantify the
organisation’s risk appetite and prioritise
its response. That’s the value of the
business-driven approach to IT security
we call digital risk management.
The future’s bright, the
future’s digital
Digital Transformation is changing
the role of IT, moving it beyond ‘have
you turned it on and off again?’ to
understanding business dependencies
and impact. Digital technologies
are radically reshaping the way
organisations do business – from
enabling third party integrations and
interdependencies, to delivering new
customer facing applications and
services. This pressure is forcing IT
teams to work in new ways, adopting
agile and DevOps in order to meet the
business’ hunger for speed.
The combination of complexity,
interconnectedness, novelty and
speed is a risky cocktail. If something
goes wrong, the consequences are
amplified, cascading through the
organisation and ricocheting down the
supply chain at speed. All businesses
use third parties in the supply of
critical services and it is often the
additional risk introduced by these third
parties that can cause problems. The
resulting impact can range from severe
operational disruption, to revenue
leakage and reputational damage and
even regulatory non-compliance, which
means maintaining business continuity
is essential. Unfortunately, shadowy
Issue 18
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