Why the CIO role should be split in two

This ‘hybrid’ architecture is a combination of best and bad practice. When there is an outage, the new digital platforms can invariably be restored to recover business process support. But because they do not operate in isolation, instead connecting with legacy technologies, business operations themselves may not fully recover if the legacy systems continue to be impacted by the outage.

For most enterprises stuck in this hybrid state, the way forward is to be more discipline around architecture. As a CIO, I’ve experienced that many enterprises have strong architecture disciplines with great governance practices and a roadmap that closely aligns various IT strategies. Strong alignment of IT and cyber strategy, however, is often an exception rather than a rule.

Keep IT simple

Simplifying architecture at an enterprise level is something the CIO and CISO should work together concurrently as a shared goal. The benefits of doing so will accrue over time rather than immediately, hence there can be some reluctance to prioritize.