Risks

Risks follow a couple of different categories, and some of them are based on your industry or your business that they fall into or compliance.

Those could be government or industry compliance risks, but it usually falls under compliance or business risk.

There's the risk of losing a partner, part of your business, intellectual property or brand.

Something that attacks your brand specifically usually falls under two or three categories:

• Loss of intellectual property
• Loss of PII information
• Loss of PCI or personal credit card information.

You begin to understand the industry and the corporate profile. In other words you should understand: 

• Your risk profile.
• What risk is acceptable?
• What risks aren't?
• Compliance rules, regulations you have to be governed by.

There are some normalities you have to follow in all companies. For example, don't share your PII, PCI, IP and key company information.

Opportunities

CIOs can build a strategy to protect and capture data. It will tell them what’s going on.

CIOs will also have more control over:

• Who needs to know what and when (communication).
• At what level and how often.

A lot of communication and the process to deliver it is driven by the executive committee or the board or the audit committee. Those groups have to weigh in on what information they want and how often they want to see it. As a CIO you need to have an understanding of those roles and the process to communicate effectively.

Another benefit is competitiveness. It's putting the systems and controls in place to maintain agility, reduce risk and being competitive.

The cloud will create greater financial leverage, agility, and flexibility.