Dinesh Varadharajan, Chief Product Officer (CPO), Kissflow
In 2023, the CIO) role has undergone substantial evolution, transitioning from the conventional realm of IT management to becoming a strategic collaborator within the business landscape.
The upcoming year will witness increased attention on Generation AI (Gen AI) and its influence on the technology landscape.
Additionally, CIOs now play a central role in propelling Digital Transformation and the CIO sector should expect a heightened emphasis on fostering collaboration between IT and diverse business units, including finance and HR.
This collaborative approach aims to fuel innovation and enhance operational efficiencies.
Emphasising the operational layer for success will be critical in 2024 and a key business priority going forward. As technologies become more accessible to all, how can tech leaders seamlessly integrate them into businesses and capitalise on their potential?
Prioritising widespread adoption to foster innovation; speed, enabling capabilities, and strategic partnerships play a crucial role in this process.
With the integration of generative AI within these no-code/ low-code platforms, governance is one of the most debated topics which is set to become even more of a focus for enterprises and CIOs to take note of.
At Kissflow, we have already rolled out a dedicated governance layer for our platform, and our industry peers will likely follow suit.
In the coming year 2024, we are sure to see more products come to market with native generative AI integrations.
However, enterprise adoption of these solutions and feature sets will be with a degree of caution and we are unlikely to see this being applied to systems associated with critical operations until there is a greater level of maturity.
Mark Bowling, Chief Information Security and Risk Officer (CISRO), ExtraHop
We are entering the cyber whistleblower era. With more legal responsibility falling on the shoulders of CIOs and cyber leaders, whistleblowers have 10 times the reason to report unsafe cyber conditions or disreputable behavior to federal regulators.
Resource-constrained organisations cutting corners will find themselves in hot water as their practices come to light.
As an additional twist to complications, ransomware actors will also become involved in the ‘whistleblowing’ process, as a way to compel publicly traded victim companies to pay their demanded ransom.
Attacks by nation-state threat actors on the cyber supply chain will increase. Nation-state threat actors will engage in increased attacks on the national/federal supply chains which support the governments of Ukraine, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Taiwan and all members of the Five Eyes (U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand).
They will use sophisticated social engineering and zero-day exploits to gain access to administrative and design engineer credentials for creators of support software critical to the government and defence supply chains for those nations.
Once inside critical government and defence systems, the attacking nation-states will use advanced persistence strategies to maintain access. This access will be used only for strategic purposes and may only be exploited in the event of hostilities.
Attacks by hostile nation-state actors on critical infrastructures will increase.
Hostile nation-states will engage in a more vigorous and aggressive campaign to develop persistence in US critical infrastructures, specifically electric power, natural gas and petroleum, water, manufacturing, transportation and others necessary to sustain military operations.
Generative AI will be used to develop advanced attacks in less common industrial protocols and industrial control systems that are used in support of those critical infrastructures.
David Irecki, Director of Solutions Consulting, APJ, Boomi
CIOs have to be prepared for Data and AI Democratisation – enterprises will start moving towards data democratisation allowing non-specialists to easily access data without requiring specialised tools or skillsets to enhance decision-making and faster access to business insights. This will be coupled by the democratisation of AI tools and platforms.
Data Insights to be delivered at the point of capture – organisations will need to invest more in metadata (and its management) to avoid having data swamps and the problem of data scientist teams having to scramble to decipher the contents of their data lakes into business values.
AI will play a major role in this, providing ‘insights’ that the business can ‘action’ upon in more real-time than previously.
This is even more imperative as we continue to look towards embracing industry 4.0 technologies for data insights, leveraging automation, data analytics, and Artificial Intelligence to forge smarter factories.
Rise of the ‘Prompt Engineer’
The convergence of data management with data analytics and AI will only continue to rise.
The imperative is clear: enterprises must break free from data siloes, fostering agility.
As data ecosystems transition from traditional deployments to those augmented with AI, the role of ‘prompt engineers’ will gain prominence.
These specialists will play a pivotal role in structuring data (supported by integration and automation) that can be interpreted and understood by AI, ensuring real-time insights translate into swift, actionable measures.
