The article was originally published on kpmg.com.
Concern over the scale and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is growing, leading organizations to consider their response and the actions they need to take now to maintain their business. The Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) play vital roles in making sure their organizations can continue to function as pandemic containment measures are implemented. As such it is critical that CIOs and CISOs bear in the mind the following considerations in other to ensure their businesses continue during these challenging times.
You need to ensure that your business can work remotely and flexibly, and that employees are confident in being able to do so. This may require you to revisit decisions on access rights, entitlements and risk posture.
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Restrictions on travel and the spread of the virus may lead to new patterns of demand and higher traffic on digital channels. With this comes new implications CIOs and CISOs will need to be mindful of.
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Sadly, employees may be infected, may find themselves unable to travel, or needing to meet family caring commitments. As such, you should plan for a significant level of absenteeism.
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Data centers may be impacted by the virus too. A positive test may result in an evacuation and deep clean of the building; transport infrastructure disruption may prevent access, and data center staff may be unable to work.
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There may be additional demands on cloud-based services, requiring you to scale the available computing power, which may incur additional costs. At the same time, other services may show reduced demand.
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Your suppliers and partners will also be under pressure. Their operations can be disrupted too.
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Organized crime groups are using the fear of COVID-19 to carry out highly targeted spear-phishing campaigns and set up fake websites, leading to an increased risk of a cybersecurity incident.
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While COVID-19 dominates the news, you should still be aware of the possibility of an IT failure given the changing demands on your infrastructure or an opportunistic cyber-attack.
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You'll need to be able to function with limited employee numbers and be clear on the priority tasks your team needs to be able to complete.
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Amongst all these organizational considerations, your team will still look to you for leadership and support.
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